Evandro Chagas Institute


The Evandro Chagas Institute is a non-profit organization which promotes public health in Brazil named after Evandro Chagas.

History

In the 1940s fisherman Henrique Penna from the Rockefeller Foundation in Rio [de Janeiro] reported that he had discovered cases of leishmaniasis in Brazil's countryside. The disease had not been previously detected in Brazil, and as a response, Carlos Chagas of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute 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, 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.