Doctor Nuno Marques, former director of the Algarve Biomedical Center and who stood out in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, was awarded on Wednesday with the Francisco George Public Health Award, relating to the 2019 edition of the award, becoming This is the first winner of this Ministry of Health initiative.
The cardiologist, who is today the director of the Active Aging Competence Center (CCEA), which is based in Loulé, and the coordinator of the National Plan for Active and Healthy Aging, was awarded for the work “Loulé Coração Seguro – Rede Concelhia de Automatic External Defibrillation”.
«It is a great honor for me to have been the first to be recognized by an award of this magnitude», he told the Sul Informação Nuno Marques, who received the award from Manuel Pizarro, Minister of Health, and Francisco Jorge himself, after whom the award is named and whose legacy is «a milestone in Public Health at national level».
Launched by the Ministry of Health in 2018, the Francisco George Public Health Prize aims to encourage the presentation of unprecedented studies and research work in the area of public health.
The winning work, like the other applications for the 2019 edition, was “unappreciated due to the Covid-19 pandemic”.
However, in March of this year, and after a change in the composition of the award jury, all applications then presented “were considered automatically submitted”.
This led to Nuno Marques being “caught off guard. I only found out that I was awarded on Monday. It was a pleasant surprise,” he said.
In the end, «the jury decided to award the Prize to Nuno Silva Marques, author of “Loulé Coração Seguro – Rede Concelhia de Defibrilhação Automática Externa”», a work that «describes the process of implementing a Training Plan in Basic Life Support (BLS) and the Automatic External Defibrillation (AED) program in the Municipality of Loulé», according to the Ministry of Health.
«2019 was a year in which we were working hard on the automatic defibrillator network project in the municipality of Loulé. This network has already saved lives and will continue to do so, so it has already achieved its objectives», considered Nuno Marques.
Also regarding the 2019 edition, the jury awarded an honorable mention to the study “iTEAMS | The fiber of emergency”, project implemented by the National Institute of Medical Emergency that facilitates early warning. The work was authored by Luís Manuel Ladeira, João José Lourenço, José António Sousa and Filipa Maria Barros.
The winner of the 2022 edition, whose prize was awarded at the same ceremony, on Wednesday, was the work “Spatial analysis of determinants of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Portugal”, whose corresponding author is André Peralta-Santos. Co-authors are C. Pinto de Carvalho, M. Ribeiro, Diogo Godinho Simões, P. Pita Ferreita, l. Azevedo, L. Gonçalves and Pedro Pinto Leite.
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