Una década de labor del Instituto Carlos Finlay de Colombia

Abstract

The summary covers the years 1950-1959, a period of technical and financial cooperation with the Pan American Sanitary Bureau, Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization, and shows how an international organization can cooperate effectively with a government in the solution of problems of national and international importance

The Institute began its operation as the Section for Special Studies shortly after the demonstration of the existence of jungle yellow fever in Colombia in 1933. The early years of activity, up to 1948, were in cooperation with The Rockefeller Foundation

The current agreement between the Pan American Sanitary Bureau and the Instituto calls for the maintenance of a "viscerotomy" (partial autopsy: liver only) service for the recognition of yellow fever in the whole country; for the production, distribution, and application of 17D yellow fever vaccine; for the execution of epidemiological studies of yellow fever, especially in areas in which monkeys are scarce or non-existent; and for field and laboratory studies of other diseases caused by arborviruses

Originally the cooperative agreement included the Aëdes aegypti eradication operations. This activity was later turned over to the Servicio Cooperativo Interamericano de Salud Pública but in 1957 was back again in the Instituto, for the terminal phases of the campaign