Oswaldo Cruz Foundation Oswaldo Cruz Foundation 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 main public health research institutions. It was founded by Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, a noted physician and epidemiologist. The organization started in 1898 as the Federal SeroTherapy Institute with the objective of developing serum and vaccines against the bubonic plague. It was located outside of Rio de Janeiro. The institute’s activities, however, changed from simple production into research and experimental medicine, especially
Oswaldo Cruz Cruz. As a child, he moved to Rio de Janeiro with his family. At the age of 15 he started to study at the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro and in 1892 he graduated as medical doctor with a thesis on water as vehicle for the propagation of microbes. Inspired by the great work of Louis Pasteur, who had developed the germ theory of disease, four years later he went to Paris to specialize in bacteriology at the Pasteur Institute, which gathered the great names of this branch of science of that time. He was financed by his