Francisco George

Francisco Henrique Moura George GOIH • GCM (born 1947) is a Portuguese doctor and specialist in public health, who was Director-General of Health in Portugal between 2005 and 2017. He was then president of the Portuguese Red Cross from November 2017 to November 2021.

Early life George was born on 21 October 1947 in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. He is the great-grandson of Charles George, an English steam-power specialist who moved to Portugal in the middle of the 19th century to work for the Royal Navy Arsenal in Lisbon, maintaining and repairing ships. Charles and his wife had 14 children, including nine sons, and thus the surname of "George" is found widely in Portugal.

George's father, Carlos Henrique George, was a doctor and director of the Hospital de Santa Marta in Lisbon and his mother was Maria Isabel Moura. George had a twin brother who was born a few minutes earlier, named João. He attended the Colégio Valsassina, a private school in Lisbon where, among others, he studied under Avelino Henriques da Costa Cunhal, a noted lawyer, historian, playwright, painter, designer, and opponent of the Estado Novo dictatorship, who was the father of the Communist Party leader, Álvaro Cunhal. When he and his brother were 14 their father decided to separate them, sending them to different schools, because they were always playing around and not concentrating on their studies. His brother was eventually sent to England.

George married the architect Maria João Gaudêncio Simões (1948-2006) in 1970, having met her in England. Never having had any doubt that he would work in the field of medicine, he graduated with distinction from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon in 1973 and then worked as an intern in internal medicine at the Hospital de Santa Marta. In 1977 he completed the public health course at the National School of Public Health of Lisbon. From 1976, he worked in the municipality of Cuba and then in the municipality of Beja, both in the Alentejo region.

Career As a World Health Organization (WHO) scholarship holder, he took the family health course offered by the WHO and the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) in 1978. Between 1980 and 1991, he was employed by the WHO, undertaking missions to Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe, China, Republic of the Congo, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Mali, Madagascar, Lesotho and Zambia. In 1980 he was appointed head of the WHO Health Services Development Project in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. In 1986, he became the WHO representative in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau and, in 1990, an epidemiologist for the WHO Global AIDS Programme and coordinator of that programme in Southern Africa. He is a member of the Portuguese Epidemiology Association, the Portuguese Association for the Promotion of Public Health, the Portuguese Society of Virology, and the Portuguese Association for the Clinical Study of AIDS. He was the rapporteur and co-editor of the publication entitled Health in Portugal, published in English under the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union (2007).

Awards and commendations On 30 January 2006, George was awarded the rank of Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry, which he received on 5 March from the president of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio. On 7 April 2014, he received the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service from the Ministry of Health. On retirement from the ministry of health he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit (Portugal) by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on 5 December 2017. In the same year, he was awarded the Medal of Social Merit by Lisbon City Council. In 2019, he received the 2019 Terra Justa Award from the municipality of Fafe. Also in 2019, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon.