Courtesy / ANEM
New direction of ANEM
Maria Fontão took office as president of ANEM – and left some “messages” regarding Health in Portugal.
ANEM – National Association of Medical Students was founded more than 40 years ago, in 1983. It is the Portuguese Federation of Medical Students, made up of 10 associations and representing around 12,000 students from 10 Medical Schools in the country.
The association has a new direction, led by Maria Fontão, which will attempt to defend health policies and medical training based on scientific evidence and long-term structural planning.
Maria Fontão has already taken office. The student at the University of Minho School of Medicine did not hide the fact that there is a serious crisis in the National Health Service (SNS).
It is a “truly structural, unprecedented” crisis, the result of “years and years of fragmented policies” and short-term responses that do not keep up with the complexity of Health challenges in Portugal.
“O park planning of health policies, especially with regard to human resources, is in the center of the problem. We cannot accept decisions devoid of evidence, when Portugal remains critically poorly positioned in the OECD context when it comes to reliable mapping of the distribution of doctors”, analyzed Maria Fontão, in the inauguration speech sent to ZAP.
A considers that, in order to have a quality health system, the Medical training is essential.
And alert to the growing overload training of Medical Schools, aggravated by infrastructural limitations, insufficient financial resources and bureaucratic obstacles that compromise the quality of clinical teaching.
“We are failing as a country when we do not make medical training a strategic priority. Dignifying the medical student inevitably means dignifying the patient and the National Health Service”, warns the new leader of ANEM.
