O Instituto Oswaldo Cruz: 115 anos de ciência para a saúde da população Brasileira

Abstract

The authors report a brief history of the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, which has its main pavilion built as a castle to represent a temple to science and health for the Brazilian population. Specifically created, in its initial concept, for the manufacture of serum and vaccine against the plague and for the campaign against this endemic disease, the Federal Serum Therapy Institute formed a small group of health professionals that quickly absorbed and expanded the scientific and technological knowledge necessary for the Institute successful creation and consolidation. Heading the initiative, Oswaldo Cruz knew to broaden such a successful technological development primordium to include and encourage the development of national science in the field of infectious diseases. With a scientific development level comparable to the highest standards of the time, associated with the training of young scientists through the Application Course created in 1908, the dissemination of knowledge generated in the Institute’s laboratories through the Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, published from 1909 on, and the production of various prophylactic, therapeutic and diagnostic agents; at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz had already taken the tasks that today characterize the modern university: teaching, research and extension. Foundation for the creation of the Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz in 1970, the IOC is now a leading Institution for Research, Education and Technological Development in Brazil and South America. The Institute’s scientific vigor can be illustrated by the more than 2,300 theses and dissertations in its research laboratories that house about 700 students of its Doctoral programs, and published, in 2014, more than 570 scientific articles.