The Garcia de Orta Hospital (HGO), EPE is a legal person of public law of a business nature, endowed with administrative, financial and patrimonial autonomy.

HGO started its activity in September 1991, replacing the old Hospital da Misericórdia de Almada / District Hospital of Almada, which in the meantime was no longer able to respond to an increasingly growing population of the Setúbal peninsula and which provided only basic hospital care. .

In 2003, as a result of its development and degree of differentiation created, it was classified as Central Hospital, the only one on the south bank of the Tagus, ceasing to belong to the Public Administrative Sector and moving to the State Business Sector, first as a public limited company exclusively public (SA) and later, from 2006, as a public business entity (EPE), a statute that it maintains until today.

HGO currently serves an estimated population of around 350,000 inhabitants in the municipalities of Almada and Seixal. Some services at the Hospital Garcia de Orta respond to populations from all over the Setúbal Peninsula, namely in the areas of specialty of Neonatology and Neurosurgery.

The Hospital has a capacity of 545 beds, distributed by various specialties and reference services that regularly support other hospitals such as Pediatrics, Obstetrics, Vascular Surgery, Cardiology, Hematology, Endocrinology, Nuclear Medicine, Rheumatology, Orthopedics, Neuroradiology, Nephrology, among others. HGO currently has more than 2900 employees.

The gradual development of the Hospital and the assistance needs of the population it served, have led HGO to make available over the years new services such as kidney transplantation, the multipurpose urgency for the entire Setúbal Peninsula, the regular support of the Neurosurgery specialty to several hospitals of the South of the Country and the Intervention Cardiology Unit.

The Garcia de Orta Hospital also offers a set of Complementary Diagnostic and Therapeutic Means (MCDT), of high differentiation such as: Angiography, Magnetic Resonance, Computed Axial Tomography and Nuclear Medicine, especially relevant for PET (Positron Emission Tomography) ), unique in the National Health Service hospitals, south of the Tagus.

The Child Development Center, which started operating in 2007, is the only one in the South of the country inserted in the National Health Service and is aimed at children and young people living in the area of ​​influence of the Hospital with neurological and developmental pathologies.

Why Garcia de Orta?

In 1989 it was decided by ministerial decree that Hospital de Almada would be renamed Hospital Garcia de Orta, in honor of the notable physician, botanist and naturalist of the 19th century. XVI with the same name.

Garcia de Orta was born in Castelo de Vide, where he carried out his first studies. The precise date of his birth is unknown, which must however be in the last decade of the 15th century.

Of Hebrew descent, son of the Spanish Hebrew Fernão de Orta and Leonor Gomes, he attended the Universities of Salamanca and Alcalá de Henares, where he obtained degrees in Arts, Philosophy and Medicine. In Alcalá he also studied Botany, a chair that was taught there for the first time in the Iberian Peninsula.

After practicing at Castelo de Vide, Garcia de Orta was hired in 1527 as a professor by the University of Lisbon, having also been a doctor at the court of D. João III. Seven years later, in 1534, he decided to emigrate to Goa, where he would develop his research work decisively. He also thought that he would find greater peace in Portuguese India for himself and his family, at a time when the Inquisition strongly disturbed the faithful of the Hebrew religion, whose faith Garcia de Orta professed.

In Goa, where he lived for 34 years, in 1563 he published his most notable work, “Colóquios dos Simples e Drogas da Índia”, which, according to Luís de Camões, would give “a new light in medicine”. For Almeida Garrett, “it is not only a science treatise, but also a monument of the history of art and language”.

Garcia de Orta passed away in Goa in 1568, never having directly had problems with the Inquisition, despite the fact that he established a court in India in 1565. However, twelve years after his death, in 1580, the Court of the Holy Office condemns him, post-mortem, for the “crime of Judaism” ordering to dig up and burn his bones.