PSD / Flickr
Álvaro Santos Almeida will replace António Gandra D’Almeida as the new executive director of the National Health Service (SNS).
The social democrat Álvaro Santos Almeida was chosen by the Government to be the new executive director of the NHS.
This appointment comes in the wake of , after controversy broke out over an alleged improper accumulation of functions.
Álvaro Santos Almeida, who was a PSD deputy between October 2019 and March 2022, in the XIV legislature, now assumes the position.
The new executive director of the SNS was also a candidate for Mayor of Porto in the 2017 municipal elections, for the PSD.
He is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto (FEP) and has a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics and Science.
In the health sector, was President of the Health Regulatory Authoritybetween 2005 and 2010, and is also the Director of the Master in Management and Economics of Health Services.
Another “partisan political profile”
In a reaction to , the president of the Order of Doctors, Carlos Cortes confessed that does not view the appointment with enthusiasm.
“This news does not arouse great enthusiasm, he is not a person exactly known for his direct intervention in the National Health Service. He is not a person knowledgeable in the field”, he highlighted.
“It is a party political profileand precisely one of the lines that the overwhelming majority of people have drawn in recent days is that we have a fundamentally technical profile, someone on the ground, someone who knows health professionals and the difficulties of the SNS”, said the president.
The “political-party” choices to the detriment of “technical” ones to direct the SNS is, precisely, one of the criticisms that Carlos Cortes has been making towards Governments.
“The appointment has to be fundamentally technical and not, as we often see, party-political appointments, which is the last thing that should be done in this sector and, above all, at the head of the executive direction of the National Health Service”, considered Carlos Cortes, speaking to Lusa, this Saturday.
The director said that an executive director must be someone “who knows the health system very well, firstly, but, above all, necessarily, the SUS” and who “can go through changes in governments and be always focused, dedicated to the executive direction of the SUS, without party political interference”.
In turn, Xavier Barretopresident of the Association of Hospital Administrators, considered, on the same channel, that Santos Almeida knows health in Portugal, highlighting that he was president of the Health Regulatory Entity and president of the Regional Health Administration.
“Know health in Portugal. He is not at the moment in the SNS – and therefore he will certainly lack that knowledge of practice, of day-to-day life, of what is happening on the ground – and therefore I hope that the team can make up for this possible gap”, he also warned .
