“Respecting the principle of institutional loyalty, I will present to the Minister of Health, together with the team I manage, the request to resign from the position of executive director of the National Health Service”, said Fernando Araújo in a statement.

According to Fernando Araújo, this “difficult decision” will allow the new guardianship to “execute the policies and measures it deems necessary, with the required speed, preventing the current executive direction (DE-SNS) from being considered an obstacle to its implementation”.

“DE-SNS is a technical body, a public institute of the State, which must be above political issues or party agendas, and which executes public policies determined by the Government”, also highlighted the statement signed by Fernando Araújo.

The executive direction began its activity on January 1, 2023, following the new Statute of the National Health Service (SNS) proposed by the then minister Marta Temido, with the objective of coordinating the assistance response of all SNS units and to modernise its management.

According to Fernando Araújo, in the “first and only meeting held” with the guardianship of the new government, DE-SNS conveyed the opening for the continuity of functions, with the aim of completing the ongoing reform, but placing itself at “the disposal of the new government team, if it understood how to change the policies and faces of the system”.

“We clarified that we did not seek legal compensation. Each member of the team has a previous professional life, four of us in the SNS, one in the Ministry of Finance and the other in private activity, and we did not intend to burden the public good under any circumstances”, the doctor also assured.

Fernando Araújo also said that he requested that the dismissal of the executive management take effect the day after the presentation of the activity report required by the ministry, which he claims was “acquainted with via email at the same time it was published in the media”.

Scrutiny

“We do not shy away from presenting the requested document, which we have already started to prepare, especially because we think that it is not only a responsibility, but also a duty, to expose the results of the work carried out, so that it can be scrutinized, something healthy in life public”, he highlighted.

In an extensive statement, Fernando Araújo said that he left, together with his team, with the notion that “everything that had been planned” was not done and that they “certainly made mistakes”, but “time was always short to execute a reform of this dimension.”

“However, the first signs are quite positive and more favorable than the forecasts that had initially been included in the planning instruments”, said the doctor, who will now, “quietly”, return to his care, teaching, and research team, as an NHS doctor and university professor.

After thanking the professionals with whom he worked for their availability and commitment, Fernando Araújo left a “personal word of recognition to the XXIII Government” and to the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, “for all the support shown since the first day, from the personal and public way”, which he says he holds “with enormous honor and respect”.