Manuel Pizarro takes office today as Minister of Health and takes charge of a sector characterized by successive crises, the lack of professionals and a lack of response to users to the climate of tension between the different agents in the sector. A “huge task” – in the words of former minister Adalberto Campos Fernandes – which is now given to the 58-year-old doctor, former secretary of state and leader of PS/Porto.
With this appointment, Manuel Pizarro leaves the seat of Member of the European Parliament, to which he was elected in 2019. “I return to Portugal with determination and willingness to work for the defense of the Portuguese and the National Health Service,” he said yesterday in Batalha, Leiria, on the sidelines of the Socialist Academy, where he also left a message of “tribute and recognition to Marta Temido for the extraordinary work she has done over four years” .
The fact that the new minister’s choice falls on a PS leader was emphasized yesterday in diametrically opposite directions: on the one hand, to give a political weight that Marta Temido did not have in the government; on the other hand, since it was an appointment of the PS apparatus, a sign, against the opposition, of the restrictions of António Costa’s Executive.
The former health minister, Adalberto Campos Fernandes, emphasizes the first point. “With different profiles, there were two good solutions: Fernando Araújo and Manuel Pizarro. He is a good choice, he has great political power, he is a doctor and he has experience, work done. This is essential, we no longer have room to fail in Public Health,” said the minister who preceded Marta Temido to DN, and who says he expects a mandate from Pizarro “in a framework of openness, of dialogue with professionals, with the various sectors”.
When the nomination was announced, the different sectors reacted to different voices. For Miguel Guimarães, president of the Ordem dos Médicos, this is “a sensible decision”: the new minister “is technically prepared and has political weight”. “Of the various candidates discussed, it is probably the one with the most political weight, that is, it can defend within the Council of Ministers the importance of health for the country,” he told Lusa. For the National Association of Public Health Physicians, through the voice of the president, Gustavo Tato Borges, this is a “good compromise solution”.
Ana Rita Cavaco, president of the Ordem dos Enfermeiros, sees the appointment with caution and without expectations. “It is the third health minister appointed since 2016 and we don’t expect anything””He is a familiar face to all nurses,” he tells DN. ‘He is a familiar face to all nurses’ because ‘in 2009 he was the one who put an end to the nursing career that is now being fought for, structured and motivating professionals’, he underlines. there is now the “opportunity to correct mistakes you made in the past”. On the part of the Order, Ana Rita Cavaco concludes, “The minister can wait for an opening for dialogue and negotiations. Let’s wait and see.”
The tone of the opposition parties was critical. The choice shows the “António Costa’s inability to recruit people into society. He can only recruit from the staunch leaders of the PS”, be the leader of the PSD, Luís Montenegro. André Ventura, president of Chega, defended in RTP that Pizarro’s “partisan” profile directly blames António Costa for what is happening in Health. For the Liberal Initiative, the government “always fits a member of the PS apparatus”. On the left, the PCP devalued the nomination, arguing that what makes the difference is policy and that priority should be given to ending the “chronic underfunding” of the SNS. Catarina Martins, leader of BE, wrote on Twitter that the minister’s change “does not guarantee any change” – “nothing changes with the same policy”.
A doctor with a long political career
Manuel Pizarro, born in Coimbra in 1964, but raised in Porto since childhood, has a degree in medicine from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, specializing in Internal Medicine, and participated in the creation of the Intermediate Care Unit of Medicine at the Hospital de S. João, of which he was deputy coordinator.
Already with experience in municipal politics in Porto, he was elected deputy of the Assembly of the Republic in 2005. In parliament, to which he would be re-elected in the next two legislatures, he was always a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Public Health. In 2008, he held the position of Secretary of State for Health and, in the second government of José Sócrates, Deputy Secretary of State for Health. (in both cases with Ana Jorge as minister). Files such as reforming primary health care, extending the dental check-up program to include children, or establishing the public bank of umbilical cord cells ran through his office.
A top figure in the PS in the north, he was leader of the Municipality of Porto and is the leader of the Porto District, a position he has held since 2016. He was twice a defeated candidate for the Porto Chamber. A close name for António Costa, the relationship between the two suffered some friction during the last European elections, when Pizarro was placed ninth on the lists for the European Parliament. A place that initially would not be up for election, but which the PS eventually chose.
Yesterday, still in Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stated that the name had been suggested to him on Friday “almost at the end of the morning”. “Of course I accepted,” the head of state said, inserting this move in the broader context of “National Health Service regulation.” Following the approval last Thursday in the Council of Ministers of the new executive directorate of the SNS, Marcelo recalled that will now analyze the decree, which will have evolved into “a position close to the position he defended. In other words, the “idea of a clear separation between political decisions and a more independent, more autonomous government” [do SNS]through an institution other than the Ministry”. With Rui Miguel Godinho
Source: DN
