Oswaldo Cruz - Work in Brazil

Work in Brazil

Cruz found the seaport of Santos ravaged by a violent epidemic of bubonic plague that threatened to reach Rio de Janeiro and engaged himself immediately in the combat of this disease. The mayor of Rio de Janeiro authorized the construction of a plant for manufacturing the serum against the disease which had been developed at the Pasteur Institute by Alexandre Yersin and coworkers, and asked the institution for a scientist who could bring to Brazil this know-how. The Pasteur Institute responded that such a person was already available in Brazil and he was Dr. Oswaldo Cruz.

Thus, on May 25, 1900, the Federal Serotherapy Institute destined to the production of sera and vaccines against the bubonic plague was created with the Baron Pedro Afonso as Director General and the young bacteriologist Oswaldo Cruz as Technical Director. The new Institute was established in the old farm of Manguinhos at the western shores of Guanabara Bay. In 1902, Cruz accepted the office of Director General of the new institute and soon amplified its scope of activities, now no longer restricted to the production of sera but also dedicated to basic and applied research and to the building of human resources. In the following year, Oswaldo Cruz was appointed Director General of Public Health, a position corresponding to that of a today's Minister of Health. Using the Federal Serotherapy Institute as technical-scientific base, he started a quick succession of memorable sanitation campaigns. His first adversary: a series of yellow fever endemics, which had earned Rio de Janeiro the sinister reputation of Foreigners' Grave. Between 1897 and 1906, 4,000 European immigrants had died there from this disease.

Cruz was initially successful in the sanitary campaign against the bubonic plague, to which end he used obligatory notification of cases, isolation of sick people, treatment with the sera produced at Manguinhos and extermination of the rats populating the city.