Former Secretary of State Carlos Martins will head the Santa Maria local health department.

Former Secretary of State for Health Carlos Martins will head the local health department at the Santa Maria Hospital, a National Health Service (SNS) source told Lusa.

The government’s former secretary of state for health, Durau Barroso, will replace Ana Paula Martins, who resigned in mid-December as president of the board of directors of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Norte, which includes the Santa Maria and Polished Valente hospitals. .

At the time, Ana Paula Martins, former president of the Order of Pharmacists, said she would not run for the presidency of the Local Health Unit (ULS) of Santa Maria, a new organizational model that, as of January 1, will merge the Santa Maria and Pulido Valente hospitals with primary health care of the Lisbon Group of Health Centers of the North and West (Mafra).

Carlos Martins, who will become president of the ULS of Santa Maria, was born in 1961, graduated in international relations at the Faculty of Political and Economic Relations of the University of Minho and held several political positions in the PSD at regional and national level. .

In 1990, when he was first elected as a member of the City Council of Portimão, he became a member of the General Council of the Regional Hospital of Portimão, a position he held until 1994, when he became Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Regional Administration of Portimão. Health Algarve.

Between 1992 and 1993 he was Deputy Under-Secretary for Parliamentary Affairs and Deputy Deputy Prime Minister. In 1999, he was elected as a deputy, joining the parliamentary committee on health and drug addiction, and in April 2002, he joined the Social Democratic government led by Durau Barroso as Secretary of State for Health.