Montenegro argues that there are fewer health problems today than there were a year ago.

The Prime Minister argued today that the "quality of response" of the NHS is highlighted daily, considering that today there are "fewer problems" than when he took office, and said that for every closed emergency room there are several open.

"Every day we are confronted with certain episodes, and often the episodes even have reports that don't exactly match the objective and concrete terms in which they occurred, but when we are confronted with certain episodes every day surrounding the functioning of the National Health Service [SNS], we forget that on those same days there are hundreds or even thousands of other episodes where the people involved and their families ended their occurrences and events, often with tragic outcomes, congratulating health professionals, congratulating the efficiency of the SNS, saying 'I have nothing to complain about, I'm here to thank this professional, this assistant, this nurse or this doctor for their care,'" said Luís Montenegro.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the new Sintra Hospital, which was attended by the Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, the Prime Minister stated that "every day there are thousands of confidences from Portuguese men and women highlighting the quality of the response of the National Health Service", but "every day" it seems the country is faced with "a total incapacity" and argued that "the capacity to respond is not decreasing"

"The NHS serves thousands upon thousands of citizens every day, and it does so with quality, efficiency, compassion, and the recognition of those who care for them and their families. And we often express our gratitude to healthcare professionals, forgetting that when certain news stories gain a certain dimension, they are also offensive to the professionals behind them," he argued.

Luís Montenegro considered that the problems in healthcare “are unfortunately classic, they have been going on for many years”, but he also wanted to “recognize what is being done”.

"We have problems in the emergency room today, yes, sir, but we have fewer problems than we had a year ago. And perhaps a year ago we already had fewer problems than we had two years ago. And when we have problems today in five or six emergency rooms, we sometimes forget that we have 160 or 170 emergency rooms operating at the same time as those four or five have problems," he said.

The Prime Minister refused to allow his words to be seen as "a devaluation" of the problems of the NHS, and stated that "any case is important", stating that it only takes one case in which there is "a problem in the response or a delay in the response, or an inability to promote the response" to deserve the concern and "full attention" of the Government.