Evandro Chagas Institute Evandro Chagas Institute 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. 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
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation after Oswaldo Cruz assumed its leadership in 1902. From there on, the institute became the base for memorable sanitation campaigns in an age of outbreaks and epidemics of the bubonic plague, yellow fever, and smallpox. The Institute, however, was not confined to Rio de Janeiro and, on the contrary, collaborated in the occupation of the country’s interior through scientific expeditions, aiding in the development of the country. When Oswaldo Cruz died, in 1917, the Institute, which by then already bore his name, was nationally consolidated through important scientific achievements, such as Carlos Chagas’ description of the complete cycle of the