Helena Canhão, who was speaking to Lusa about the meeting Health Services -- 50 years, the past and the future, which takes place on Wednesday, acknowledges the progress of the National Health Service over 50 years, but points out that the reality today is different. There has been a "major demographic change" and the population is now ageing, with chronic diseases and in need of different responses. "This is an opportunity. But the Recovery and Resilience Plan is a 'one shot', so we have to take advantage of it. Then, we have to make choices that are sustainable in the future, otherwise, there is no RRP that will save us", said the official. The conference, which will take place on the future campus of Nova Medical School, in Carcavelos, is part of the initiatives that precede the Estoril Conferences, which take place in October. The specialist, who is also president of the Council of Portuguese Medical Schools, recalls that the various achievements in terms of health in the last 50 years have reduced infectious diseases and infant mortality and have led the population to live longer, but says that a change is now needed to make the health system more sustainable. "This major goal of increasing and prolonging our lives has also led us to a surplus in the ageing index, which is the number of people over 65 years old over the number of young people up to 15 years old. Portugal is now one of the countries with the highest ageing index in Europe", she said. To deal with these demographic changes, with the ageing population, with chronic diseases and in need of more health care, the system "has to be different" and "have responses that were not necessary before". She recalls that the Portuguese health system was designed "to focus heavily on consultations, which were periodic, and was very much based on open-door emergencies, rather than being supported in the community", and advocates a "reversal in the form of response and access to health care". "We need a more preventive response and much more investment in community support, in relation to other 'players', for example, social ones, because of the responses we have to have for the elderly", she said, considering it unbearable to think that a 70-year-old person, when they cannot be at home with home care support, has to go to a home and stay there "for another 20 years, until they are 90". She points to the reversal of weight between the public and private sectors -- "before we had all the resources in the public sector and today the private sector, in terms of notoriety, is almost at the same level as the public sector" -- and recalls that health professionals now have more attractive offers in the private sector and that the conditions in the public sector have been deteriorating, with the National Health Service (SNS) losing competitiveness. However, she insists on the need to maintain "a universal service", with the SNS providing support to those who need it and are ill, but argues that from the point of view of the organisation, "an intelligent system is needed that will also seek a contribution from the private sector to the public sector". "There has to be this articulation for the good of all of us and for the sustainability of the system", she added, highlighting the importance of the role that municipalities can play in the social area, "preventing those who do not need to be hospitalised from being at home". As an example, she told Lusa that she saw a couple in their 80s in consultation, in which the woman had had a stroke and was incapacitated. The man, in addition to his wife, also took care of two children: one of them, 60 years old, had also had a stroke and the other, 55, had a neurodegenerative disease. "He was taking care of two children and his wife. He couldn't do physiotherapy and didn't have money for anything, it's desperate to see people like this", she lamented. Read Also: RRP. Execution rises to 20% with payments reaching 4,358 million (Portuguese version)