Brazil - Oswaldo Cruz Foundation: health, science and culture in Manguinhos

The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz – Fiocruz, in Portuguese) has its origins in the Federal Serum Therapy Institute (Instituto Soroterápico Federal, in Portuguese), founded in 1900, on Manguinhos Municipal Farmlands, in the then federal capital of the country (Rio de Janeiro), to manufacture serums and vaccines against the bubonic plague that had arrived in Brazil via the Port of Santos (São Paulo) in the previous year.