The President of the Republic today praised health professionals and defended a strengthening of the SNS resources, in a message that marks the 41 years of this network of public establishments and services.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa “reminds everyone that it is necessary to go further, reinforce and provide the National Health Service (SNS) with the appropriate means to respond to the great challenge of the times to come” and evokes in this note the founder of the PS and former minister António Arnaut, who died two years ago and is considered the “father” of the NHS.

“The President of the Republic marks today, September 15, the 41 years of the NHS, saluting and thanking the health professionals who over the years, and in particular in this exceptional time of the pandemic of covid-19, with great dedication and , often, with enormous personal and family sacrifice, true heroes as they have repeated, they have dedicated the best of themselves to taking care of the Portuguese “, the note reads.

According to the head of state, this year, “more than ever”, we must “remember that the SNS is one of the main achievements of the 25th of April, it is a pillar of the democratic rule of law and a key piece for human and for social justice “.

“The President of the Republic is honored to have voted on the Constitution of the Republic, which paved the way for the creation of the SNS”, writes Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who was a constituent deputy for the PSD.

In the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic of 1976, which had only votes against the CDS, it was established that “the right to health protection is realized by the creation of a universal, general and free national health service” and that among the tasks of the State in this The subject was “to discipline and control the entrepreneurial and private forms of medicine, articulating them with the national health service”.

The creation of the SNS was accomplished three years later with Law No. 59/1979 approved by PS, PCP and UDP, with the votes against PSD and CDS, which provided that the creation of this “network of organs and services” in the within the Ministry of Social Affairs, through which “the State guarantees the right to health protection, under the terms of the Constitution”.

“Recalling António Arnaut, who awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Liberty on April 25, 2016, the President of the Republic reminds everyone that it is necessary to go further, reinforce and provide the SNS with the appropriate means to respond to the great challenge of the coming times. We all have to fight, with courage and determination, for a better NHS, an essential condition for better health at the service of the Portuguese “, adds Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

Last June, regarding the death of a doctor with covid-19 in Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa published a note to defend that the effort of health professionals “deserves the appropriate means and the appropriate careers within the NHS”.

The covid-19 pandemic, a disease caused by a new coronavirus detected in December last year in China, affected 196 countries and territories.

In Portugal, where the first cases were confirmed on March 2, more than 1,800 people have died in a total of close to 65,000 cases of infection accounted for, according to the Directorate-General for Health (DGS).