Office of the High Commissioner for Health
Welcome to the website of the Portuguese Office of the High Commissioner for Health!
The Office of the High Commissioner for Health (ACS) is a central service of the Health Ministry (MS), integrated within the State’s direct administration and endowed with administrative autonomy.
The ACS was created by Regulatory Decree no. 7/2005 of 10 August, which defined it as a service whose purpose is to coordinate and articulate public policies regarding the preparation and execution of the National Health Plan for 2004-2010 and of specific programs of national scope, especially in those fields considered as top priority.
Within the scope of the execution of the Program for the Restructuring of the State’s Central Administration, the new Organic Law of the Ministry of Health (MS) was published in the Diary of the Republic (no. 208, Series I) on the 27th of October, reinforcing the MS’s activities and conferring to it the responsibility of coordinating the MS’s activities in the fields of strategic planning and international relations.
Mission and Attributions
In accordance with the ACS’s Organic Law ACS, published in the Diary of the Republic (no. 218/2007of 29 May), the ACS has the following missions:
To guarantee technical support for the formulation of policies and strategic planning in the field of health, in articulation with financial programs;
- To ensure the development of vertical health programs;
- To coordinate international relations;
- To support and evaluate the carrying out of policies, planning instruments and results obtained, in articulation with the MS’s other services and bodies;
- To ensure the elaboration of, support for and evaluation of the National Health Plan.
In order to carry out its mission, the following attributes were given to the ACS:
- To provide technical support for the definition and structuring of the MS’s policies, priorities and objectives, and to promote the procurement of health benefits by ensuring a better articulation between the diverse services and bodies;
- To support the definition of the main options in terms of budgeting, basing itself on the attributions of the Central Administration of the Health System, P.I.;
- To ensure the elaboration of the National Health Plan and evaluate the results of its execution;
- To support and evaluate the implementation of the Ministry’s policies and programs, as well as to elaborate, divulge and support the creation of instruments for planning, support and evaluation;
- To ensure national coordination in the definition and development of the vertical health programs which are under its direct guidance;
- To guarantee the production of adequate and namely statistic information, within the framework of the national statistic system, in relation to the Ministry’s fields of intervention;
- To coordinate the MS’s activities in the domain of international relations and its articulation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, thus guaranteeing the coherence of the operational interventions carried out by the services and bodies.
Structure
The ACS is directed by a high commissioner, with the cooperation of two adjunct high commissioners, and includes up to three National Coordinating Bodies:
