Nísia Trindade de Lima: Pride of Fiocruz, pride of Brasil

April 202

In the most recent editor’s note of HCS-Manguinhos (HCSM-Manguinhos, vol. 30, 2023), scientific editor Marcos Cueto highlights the joy and optimism of having Nisia Trindade de Lima at the head of the Brazilian Ministry of Health.

“We trust that Lima is an extraordinary administrator and persuasive communicator to different audiences, capable of managing overwhelming challenges, such as facing the dismantlement of the SUS funding, the disruption of primary healthcare, and the restoration of programs as the National Immunizations Program and the Popular Pharmacy Program of Brazil,” says the letter

The letter entitled Nísia Trindade de Lima: Pride of Fiocruz, pride of Brasil stresses her remarkable trajectory in Fiocruz and emphasizes her credentials to face new challenges, thanks to her capability to articulate fruitful cross-sectoral dialogues between science, national politics, and global health. 

Lima is the first woman to head the ministry created in 1953, whose 50 predecessors were all men, and was the first woman to lead Fiocruz. She led Fiocruz in the fight against COVID-19 and signed the agreement for transferring technology of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to produce it in Fiocruz facilities at the Immunobiological Technology Institute (Bio-Manguinhos).

Lima is a sociologist and joined Fiocruz thirty years ago. She was a researcher and then director of Casa de Oswaldo Cruz (1998-2005), a unit of Fiocruz for research, teaching, documentation, and communication in the history of health and science, the same unit that is responsible for the publication of HCS-Manguinhos.

“The trust in Lima’s management rises not only from the fact that she is a woman. It confirms that social scientists and historians can contribute with their studies to public health policies and the Brazilian Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde, SUS), continues the letter”. 

The letter also highlights changes in the publication system of HCS-Manguinhos. From 2023 onwards, História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos will adopt the continuous publication system (also known as continuous stream of publication). This system consists on the electronic publication of the journal’s articles, isolated or in small groups, as soon as they are approved and internally processed (linguistic revision, normalization, layout, etc.) instead of publishing all articles of an issue at once.

According to the letter, the continuous publication system complies with the good practices of open science used by many journals of SciELO collection. It enables greater agility in the dissemination of our authors’ researches, and it will increase the journal’s visibility. 

“Hopefully, this editorial modernization and the good news about Nísia Trindade Lima’s taking office as Minister of Health represents the beginning of a promising year for the scientific community and for public health in Brazil,” concludes the letter.