The new movement, which claims to be non-partisan and open to everyone, was presented at a press conference in front of the Hospital de Santa Maria, in Lisbon, with the presence of the presidents of the Orders of Doctors and Pharmacists, and representatives of associations of patients and students of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

"These are measures that for many years have been proposed not only by professionals, by associations of people living with the disease, by political agents and which have been debated in a very wide way by Portuguese society, but are delayed in materialising", said the president of the Order of Pharmacists, Ana Paula Martins.

The measures presented include “increasing access to all health care” and through an “exceptional programme” recovering the activity impaired by covid-19 in one year and complying with the Maximum Guaranteed Response Times in all specialties.

Another of the proposed measures is, within six months, to improve the integration between proximity and hospital healthcare, shortening the waiting time for priority patients and avoiding unnecessary trips to hospitals.

Integrate and expand home hospitalisation, train and organise the National Health Service (SNS) to have a complementary response, in specific situations, to distance medicine, to monitor more frequently some chronic patients, to ensure proximity in the dispensing of medicines and the access to therapeutic and technological innovation are other measures defended in the manifest.

The movement also proposes the “10 million Portuguese project - more literacy, more prevention, more participation”, reorganising hospital services into integrated care units and integrated responsibility centres and an increase in SNS funding of around 7.5 percent per year for the next five years.

Ana Paula Martins stressed that there are only 10 measures, but that they are “necessary for the National Health Service and the national health system to respond to the Portuguese”.

"We all know - we are concerned - that an impact as we have now by the pandemic on health has many effects on the economy, has many effects on the country, and if the country needs to resume in the economy it also needs to resume in health", defended the president pharmacists, stressing that one cannot continue “looking only at the pandemic”.

"And it is this cry of warning that we genuinely bring here today because we believe that, if we do not do it now, in two or three months it will be too late, because we really have many challenges and we have many people left behind", namely patients who have seen their consultations and treatments stopped due to the pandemic.

The need for these measures was also reinforced by the president of the Ordem dos Médicos, Miguel Guimarães, stating that "at this moment" are urgent and that they will be presented "within a short time" to the Ministry of Health and the deputies.

The proposals will also be debated with various institutions of civil society, with citizens and with patient associations because “the objective is to make a positive contribution to strengthening the capacity of the National Health Service”.

"This is the appropriate time to do so, contrary to what one might think," said Miguel Guimarães.

For the president, the valorisation of health professionals is one of the fundamental proposals: "We can only have the necessary human capital in the NHS if we actually have a public procurement policy different from the one that has been used in recent years".

Otherwise, he maintained, "we will continue to have thousands and thousands of doctors, nurses and other professionals who choose to work in the private sector or go abroad and we currently need people in the NHS".

"This is the moment when we have to say yes to the National Health Service", because "we want an NHS ten million Portuguese", he defended.