The executive director of the National Health Service (DE-SNS), Fernando Araújo, resigned on Tuesday, sparking various reactions in both the healthcare and political sectors.

"This difficult decision will allow the new leadership to implement the policies and measures it deems necessary, with the required speed, preventing the current DE-SNS from being considered an obstacle to its implementation," reads the statement.

In the letter, Fernando Araújo admits that "not everything that had been planned" was done, and "mistakes" were "certainly" made, but "time was always short to implement a reform of this magnitude".

In fact, the DE-SNS argues that "in these 15 months, despite external constraints, the biggest reform in organizational terms in the 45 years of the SNS's existence was carried out".

Reacting to the news, the president of the Medical Association acknowledged that, during the previous government, there was a "two-headed leadership" of the DE-SNS, confusing its powers with those of the former Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro. "The minister must have the capacity to make decisions about the National Health Service" and the DE-SNS the capacity to implement them, argued the president of the Medical Association.

On the part of the unions, the secretary-general of the Independent Union of Doctors (SIM), Nuno Rodrigues, appealed for the work to be done, "regardless of the political color of the government".

"The structural reforms in the SNS should be maintained, the technical structures and the institutions should do their work regardless of the political color of the government," he said in a reaction to Lusa, adding that "there is a joint path that was being followed and that may be interrupted".

The president of the National Federation of Doctors (FNAM), in turn, stressed that the SNS executive board is a "very heavy, poorly functional structure with an excessive budget", in addition to "excessive powers".

For Joana Bordalo e Sá, the DE-SNS "did not help the functioning of the Local Health Units (ULS)", emphasizing that "without human resources in the field", namely doctors, it will not be possible to provide services to the population.

In the political sector, the main reaction came from the Socialist Party (PS), which will request urgent hearings in the Assembly of the Republic of the Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, and the DE-SNS. According to the Lusa agency, the request will be submitted to Parliament this Wednesday.

On the side of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), deputy Hugo Carneiro rejected the existence of a "settling of accounts". "The minister requested a set of information, which is perfectly legitimate, in order to be able to make an assessment of what was done," he explained, in statements to CNN Portugal.

Read Also: PS wants urgent hearings with the Minister of Health and the executive director of the SNS (Portuguese version)