On the 8th of December the 54th anniversary of the Santa Maria Hospital was celebrated. The date was marked by several ceremonies: a homage to the professionals working at the hospital (a tree was planted for each of the collaborators who died in 2008), a Solemn Mass celebrated by the Reverend Tomáz Numes, Auxiliary Bishop of Lisbon and Vicar General of the Diocese; inauguration of the new premises of the Clinical Pathology Services – Centralisation of Laboratories, and the inauguration of the new Intensive Care Unit and Neurosurgery Service Operating Block; official launching of the project for the construction of the João Cid dos Santos building.

The Solemn Session, which took place in the Aula Magna of the FMUL, was the setting for the signing of the Protocol of Action and Understanding that instituted the Academic Medical Centre of Lisbon. This protocol was signed by Professor Fernandes e Fernandes, Professor João Lobo Antunes and Dr. Adalberto Campos Fernandes, respectively Dean of the FMUL, President of Governing Council of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Chairman of the Board of the North Lisbon Hospital Centre.

Besides the above-mentioned signatories, the ceremony was attended by several distinguished personalities, of note among whom were the Minister of Health, Dr. Ana Jorge, the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Professor Mariano Gago, the Under Secretary of State and Health Secretary Dr. Francisco Ramos, the Chancellor of the University of Lisbon, Professor António Sampaio Nóvoa and the Clinical Director of the North Lisbon Hospital Centre, Professor João Correia da Cunha.

Following is the speech delivered by the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Professor J. Fernandes e Fernandes:

“Madam Minister of Health, Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, Chancellor of the University of Lisbon, Academic and Health Authorities, Chairman and Members of the Board of the Santa Maria Hospital, President od the Governing Council of the Institute od Molecular Medicine, President of the Scientific Council of FMUL, Collegues, Nurses, Members of Staff and Students, Ladies and Gentlemen

Firstly, I would like to welcome the Minister of Health and the Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, and thank you for your presence at this ceremony. It has a very special significance: it translated unequivocal support for a strategy and a policy that, with the hospital management, we have been building since the beginning of our mandates.

Allow me, however, to start by congratulating the Santa Maria Hospital, its board and also all those of us who, working in this Common Home, are also part of the hospital, for this anniversary.

The renovation being undertaken in the hospital, which can be seen and felt on a daily basis, was a challenge that the Faculty of Medicine has accompanied with the greatest interest, because a modern and efficient Santa Maria Hospital is indispensable to our educational action and to the development of medical research. The hospital, ministers, ladies and gentlemen, is truly, and allow me this metaphor, the heart of the faculty, and a rejuvenated and healthy heart is indispensable to the health of this academic campus that we are now celebrating.

Indeed, the Academic Medical Centre of Lisbon, for the official standing of which we have just signed an Action and Understanding Protocol, is not merely an intention; it is based on a palpable reality, which already exists, which is set up on the strength and vitality of the institutions that have signed up to it, and which the film we have just seen correctly illustrated.

Its institutionalization will mark out a qualitative leap, and allow me Minister to appropriate a designation from the scientific world, I would say a quantum leap in the evolution of our reality, and will allow the rebirth, to a different time and to other needs, of a reality that marked the golden age of Portuguese medicine in the last century: a medical school, devoted to teaching and research, intimately linked to its university hospital.

Participation in this consortium by the Institute of Molecular Medicine, to which the Faculty of Medicine is deeply linked, will bring a fundamental addition: questioning nature, which is the essence of research, is not longer compatible with the “knives, forks and spoons” that our Master João Cid dos Santos invoked. It increasingly needs new technologies and procedures, which from the molecule to the organism to the sick person, might help us to understand the most intimate mechanisms of illness and to find new paths for their treatments and prevention.

The aim of this project is clear: to contribute towards the renewal of Academic Medicine, for which modern teaching, active research and quality clinical academic units are fundamental requirements, providing the best use of the common resources that geographic integration in this academic campus facilitates and, in this way, forming a unit of reference in the European context to which we belong.

Ministers, the recent joint promulgation by yourselves of the law on the compatibility of PhD programmes with Internship is, for the aim I have mentioned, that of the revitalisation of academic medicine, a recognisably important step of which I am certain we will be able to take advantage.

Allow me to greet, on this occasion, the representatives present from the Ministry of Health institutions that have established affiliation protocols for teaching, hospitals and health centres, and which help to embody all that we term Partnership for Clinical Teaching.
Their collaboration is essential for our educational mission, and I hope that the new statutes of the faculty include their representation so that this partnership may indeed be long-lasting and two way traffic.

We are undoubtedly living in a time in which renewal of academic institutions is possible and indispensable.

It was in the context of the discussion about the Statutes of the University that, with the assent of His Excellency the Chancellor, whose presence and support for the project I am grateful, it was possible to hold in this same room, last January, a session with the Chancellor of the University of Utrecht, who also had been the Director of the Academic Medical Centre of that university, and which Minister Mariano Gago received, questioned and then encouraged us towards us building the Academic Medical Centre of Lisbon. And when, a few days later, we spoke to you, Minister of Health, shortly after having began your functions, you also showed your approval. Ministers, your committed interest has been and will be decisive for the completion of this project.

A special word of acknowledgement for Professor Fernando Lopes da Silva, who, through his remarkable experience, boundless availability and intellectual and personal generosity, supported us on this project as well as in the previous assessment and in the carrying out of the reform of the teaching being practiced at the faculty.

Professor Fernando Lopes da Silva has agreed to become a member, with Professor Stoof, the Dean of the University of Utrecht, of the External Accompanying Committee for the implementation of the Academic Centre.

Allow me a reference to Professor Jaime Celestino da Costa, who over so many years wrote and taught us about the whole problematic of teaching medicine and the university hospital, and whose presence in this room has an unmistakable meaning:

My Dear Master, this is, also, adapted to a new time and to new challenges, your struggle.

Ministers, ladies and gentlemen:

The protocol we have just signed is truly a commitment for the future; it is an act of public responsibility that we jointly accept, aware that the path will be difficult, but that only the difficult matters, as Rilke wrote to Mr. Kappus, an aspiring poet.

I am certain that in doing this we are not only honouring the past, but being able to deserve the future.”