The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, warned this Friday that the leadership of the National Health Service (SNS) must be “independent, impartial and not politicized.”
“I draw attention to the step we want to take, now promised (…) early next year in the management of the National Health Service, the determining factor in the national health system, separating political determination from independent management, liberated and not politicized, except that politics is everything that concerns human life, and certainly not partisan,” the head of state said in a video speech at the Global Health Forum, which takes place this Friday and Saturday in the center of Estoril. Congresses
Marcelo Rebelo de Souza emphasized that the ideas are in many cases relevant and clearly positive, but the implementation has time limits: “We cannot wait for this implementation indefinitely, and on the other hand, the quality requirements are increasing.”
“What all this means is that there is a very high level of expectations. Higher and higher and also the need to translate these expectations into real data in terms of resources of all kinds, starting with humans, in terms of visible results,” he said.
Addressing the participants of the congress, the head of state said that he was “in a moment of change, redefinition, under circumstances and conditions that are unlikely to be repeated in the coming years.”
“We can view some of these circumstances as difficulties. In the health sector, I am specifically referring to aspects related to the needs and state of human resources, but there are others that represent unique conditions for implementing the necessary changes, since they are organizational. in nature, structural, functional and even contextual, and it is in the necessary dialogue and reflection that such forums are absolutely necessary to bring together in a specific, concentrated and useful space and time the diverse participants who can and should contribute to the changes that need to be made “, he said.
For the President of the Republic, “this is a time for inspiration, planning and better governance. This is a time of change in planning for the future. It’s not enough to dream about it, you have to make it happen.” “.
Speaking in a global context, he advocated the need to reform global health organizations, “one or another, not to mention several, in the critical situation observed at the onset and monitoring at various points during the pandemic.”
The congress this Friday morning was attended by the Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro, and the Executive Director of SNS, Fernando Araujo.
Health policy, digital health, artificial intelligence, urbanism, climate change, development and sustainability are the topics that will be addressed by more than two hundred speakers from 14 countries at the Global Health Forum, organized by Forum Saúde XXI and CIMGLOBAL.