The Evandro Chagas Institute (
Portuguese ''Instituto Evandro Chagas'', or IEC) is a
non-profit organization which promotes
public health in
Brazil named after
Evandro Chagas
Evandro Serafim Lobo Chagas (August 10, 1905 – November 8, 1940) the eldest son of Carlos Chagas (1879-1934), noted physician and scientist who discovered Chagas disease, and brother of Carlos Chagas Filho (1910-2000), also a noted physician an ...
.
History
In the 1940s fisherman Henrique Penna from the
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...
in
Rio de Janeiro reported that he had discovered cases of
leishmaniasis
Leishmaniasis is a wide array of clinical manifestations caused by parasites of the trypanosome genus ''Leishmania''. It is generally spread through the bite of phlebotomine sandflies, ''Phlebotomus'' and ''Lutzomyia'', and occurs most freq ...
in Brazil's countryside.
The disease had not been previously detected in Brazil, and as a response,
Carlos Chagas of the
Oswaldo Cruz Institute
The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation ( Portuguese ''Fundação Oswaldo Cruz'', also known as FIOCRUZ) is a scientific institution for research and development in biological sciences located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; it is considered one of the world's ...
organized a commission leishmaniasis to be headed by his son Evandro Chagas.
In 1938 this commission became the ''Instituto de Pathologia Experimental do Norte'', or Northern Institution for Experimental Pathology (IPEN), with a mission to study leishmaniasis and other regional diseases. In 1940 Evandro Chagas died in a plane crash. To acknowledge his work as a scientist, the government changed the name of the former IPEN into the Evandro Chagas Institute.
Research
The IEC organized local volunteers to participate in the
iPrEx study, which was a
clinical trial testing the efficacy of a drug used as a
pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV infection.
References
External links
Evandro Chagas Institute
Public health organizations
Medical and health organisations based in Brazil
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