The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the central role of the One Health (OH) approach, as a multisectoral and multidisciplinary perspective, to face global health threats with complex causality. We present a critical analysis of the results of the study we conducted at Instituto Nacional de Infectologia Evandro Chagas da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (INI-Fiocruz), which evaluated Brazilian preparedn...
It is estimated that a quarter of the world’s population is infected with latent tuberculosis (LTBI), which is one of the main causes of the global tuberculosis (TB) epidemic. With the announced aim of improving the effectiveness of the treatment of LTBI, rifapentine was incorporated into the Unified Health System (SUS) in 2021, to be used in association with isoniazid, in weekly doses for a period of 3 months ...
The year 1804 marks the arrival of the Spanish expedition coordinated by the doctor Francisco Javier de Balmis, who brought the smallpox vaccine to the Spanish domains on the American continent, a preventive measure devised by the Englishman Edward Jenner in 1798. This paper aims to present data on the vaccination of enslaved and non-white people in Havana, Cuba, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between 1804 a...
With the perspective of contributing to a history of global health, we propose a history of patients in clinical research into African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), at the turn of the 19th/20th century. We emphasize the value of handwritten primary sources, notably those from the field, produced in several European colonies in Africa which reflected clinical and laboratory studies of these patient...
In recent years, there has been an increase in studies on the presence of women in the field of sciences. Tropical medicine appears as a fertile ground for expanding this discussion, as it has prioritized male narratives in its accounts. There are few records of female trajectories and the processes of women’s involvement in this field. Faced with these gaps, we seek to problematize issues that contribute...
“Leishmaniasis is a disease of dogs and those who lead a dog’s life,” said a parasitologist from Ceará in the 1950s. This is true, but in Brazil the disease has been breaking down the social and geographical barriers that characterized its initial distribution. Post-war publications by Brazilian doctors and scientists show a growing exchange with researchers from the United States and other continents, stimulat...
In the context of the broader reflection on the theme “One health, new historical approaches after COVID-19”, we seek to bring a theme that illustrates the intimate relationship between human health, the animal world and the environment, which is part of the history of tropical medicine, and, in particular, the history of Leishmaniasis. This work aims to analyze the relationship between the construction o...
In this article, I intend to demonstrate the process of globalization of intravenous injections of emetic tartar (trivalent antimonial) as the main therapeutic approach in dealing with various forms of leishmaniasis worldwide. Originally proposed by the young physician from Pará, Gaspar de Oliveira Vianna, in 1913, emetic tartar was the first substance considered specific in combating leishmaniasis, which repre...
This article aims to address the relationship between Portuguese and Brazilian tropicalist doctors in the context of the struggle for decolonization of Portugal’s territories in Africa, having as its object of analysis the Portuguese participation in the Seventh International Congresses on Tropical Medicine and Malaria, in September 1963 in Rio de Janeiro. At the beginning of the 1960s, the war began agai...
This work aims to reflect on the contributions of Odette Santos-Ferreira and her research group at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Lisbon and the team of doctors at Hospital Egas Moniz in Lisbon, who unraveled the enigma of patients admitted to this hospital since the end of the 1970s, with an unknown tropical disease. The integration of these patients in the seroepidemiological study on LAV (HIV) ...