It is on Nova da Igreja Street, in the village of Alte, in the former premises of the Cândido Guerreiro Professional School, that the National Aging Observatory (ONE) was inaugurated on Monday, March 21.

The presence of the Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security, Ana Mendes Godinho, and the Assistant Secretary of State and Health, António Lacerda Sales, were in Alte to underline the importance of this project, not only for the region, but to respond to the «new demographic paradigm» that constitutes the increase in life expectancy of the Portuguese population and the challenge of promoting active and healthy aging in the country.

As the President of ABC, Nuno Marques, explained, this initiative, which brings together three educational institutions (ABC – Algarve Biomedical Center, NOVA Medical School of Lisbon University and Porto University), was born because “there must be someone who observes, checks, analyze the data, which indicates how we are behaving over time, how we should act and how we can act in order to minimize the impact that we will have on Portuguese aging indicators».

The Minister of Labor said that this was «a historic day for Alte but also for Portugal» and highlighted the advantage of universities being associated with the project: «there are three centers of reference around research and aging, which is essential for us to have options well informed from the point of view of what are the critical areas of intervention, in order to have an increasingly active and healthy aging throughout life, and policies associated with longevity that are more focused and with more knowledge».