Nísia Trindade Lima

In the past six years -after the coup against President Dilma Rousseff -most Brazilian researchers suffered episodes of aggression, intimidation and persecution from a government marked by the dismantlement of scientific research institutions and the criminal fragilization of sanitary, medical-environmental and social interventions based on science.By the end of 2022, an event brought us optimism: the designation of Nísia Trindade Lima as Minister of Health.As from January 2023, Lima is the first woman to head the ministry created in 1953, whose 50 predecessors were all men.She is a member of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's democratic government, which has great possibility of revival and multiplication of the best moments of the recent history of Brazil.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 to the Brazilian Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde, SUS).We know her intellectual capability because most of her researches and publications are in the field of the history of health.Her classical book Um sertão chamado Brasil studies the intellectual, sanitary and political assessments of a vast region of the country, analyses a metaphor of the fragmentation between more and less developed regions and reflects on the country's social inequality (Lima, 2013).Her remarkable trajectory provides Lima with the best credentials to face new challenges, thanks to her capability to articulate fruitful cross-sectoral dialogues between science, national politics and global health.Nísia Trindade Lima holds a master's degree in political sciences and a doctoral degree in sociology from the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro (currently Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos).As from 1987, when entering Fiocruz, Lima developed special abilities by combining research and teaching with academic management.Her activities were developed at Casa de Oswaldo Cruz (COC), a Fiocruz unit specialized in studies on the history of sciences and health, scientific dissemination, and preservation of the memory and heritage of health.Between 1998 and 2005, Lima was a professor, head of the research department, vice-director and later COC director.In a recent issue of História, Ciência, Saúde -Manguinhos, we had the privilege of publishing her letter as invited editor, celebrating the 21th anniversary of the Postgraduate Program in History of Sciences and Health of COC.According to Lima, history is like "a window that opens to the past and to the present" and that "enables to think about the future as a product of historical imagination" (Lima, 2022, p.889).Lima took her valuable experience to the Fiocruz Academic Press (Editora Fiocruz) and to Fiocruz Vice-presidency of Teaching, Information and Communication, where she was outstanding in the effort to insert Fiocruz in global health.Lima was elected president of the Foundation in 2017 -as the first woman to occupy the post -with ample support of sanitarians from Fiocruz and other Brazilian health institutions

Political science · Pride · Brazilian cultural history and politics · Cultural, Media, and Literary Studies · Law · Literature, Culture, and Criticism

• A história como janela para o futuro

  Open Access•Nísia Trindade Lima•História Ciências Saúde-Manguinhos•2022

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