Pharmaceutical training course cancelled – because participants can’t get visas

The annual training programme organised by the Lusophone Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences, which was due to bring together 43 citizens from Guinea-Bissau and Angola in Coimbra in July, has been cancelled because the  pharmacy professionals involved were unable to obtain the necessary consular visas, according to the organisation.

Paulo Pedro Matos, founder of the Lusophone Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences (ALCF), told Lusa news agency that the difficulties participants face in obtaining visas to travel to Portugal have been increasing in recent years.

These are Portuguese-speaking professionals, mainly from Guinea-Bissau and Angola, who enrolled on this training course at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Coimbra, with the aim of improving the quality of the operations and services they provide.

The initiative also aims to improve the quality of local education in their day-to-day work, with a view to enhancing the health and quality of life of the populations in their respective countries.

The difficulties have worsened since the consulates outsourced their services, he said, noting that online booking platforms are constantly unavailable.

At the same time, intermediary companies are interfering in the booking process by charging fees, making it even more difficult for citizens to secure an appointment to apply for a visa.

This is despite the ALCF having sent the relevant invitation letters to the consular services and provided evidence that the training course existed, and that the trainees were eligible to participate.

For this year’s edition, 31 Guinean citizens were expected, from the Order of Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians of Guinea-Bissau and the Private Health Sector Platform, who were unable to obtain a visa in time for the previous edition and therefore, had their registration carried over to this year’s programme.

There were also 12 participants from Angola – most of whom have previously obtained Schengen visas and taken part in previous editions of the ALCF.

On Thursday, in the absence of any response from the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the letters sent by the ALCF, the academy decided to cancel the event scheduled for July 20-24 this year, Paulo Pedro Matos told Lusa.

Lusa requested clarification from the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the matter, but has not yet received a response.

The ALCF is an organisation dedicated to developing scientific activities aimed at the pharmaceutical sector and its professionals across the nine Portuguese-speaking countries: Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Príncipe, and Timor-Leste.

It was founded in 2017 and organises annual scientific events as well as various activities as part of its training programme.

This is the second scientific event to have been affected by these kind of difficulties in the space of a few weeks. A triennial midwifery congress found that several of its key speakers and participants were blocked from travelling, for the same reasons of visas refusals.

Academics at the time did not blame the situation on ‘outsourcing’ but a creeping practice of discrimination that is colouring right-wing governments.

Source: LUSA