Brazilian epidemiologist Ciro de Quadros was honored on Feb. 28 with the BBVA Foundation’s Frontiers of Knowledge Award, in the Development Cooperation category, for leading efforts to eliminate polio and measles from the Western Hemisphere and for being one of the most important scientists in the global eradication of smallpox.

“Dr. De Quadros has been a pioneering leader in global health whose work has resulted in millions of lives saved around the world,” said Dr. Mirta Roses, Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). “The Pan American Health Organization celebrates this recognition of one of its most inspiring and visionary professionals, who was instrumental in smallpox eradication and in polio and measles elimination from the Americas.”

Dr. De Quadros was born in Brazil, where he received his medical degree (1966) and a master’s degree (1968) from the National School of Public Health in Rio de Janeiro. In the 1970s, he worked in the World Health Organization’s Smallpox Eradication Program in Africa. He joined PAHO in 1977.

As head of PAHO’s immunization program during the 1980s and 1990s, he directed the successful efforts to eradicate polio and eliminate measles from the Western Hemisphere. Since 2003, he has served as executive vice-president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute.

Dr. De Quadros is also Associate Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Associate Professor at the School of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Tropical Medicine at the George Washington University. He has participated in more than 100 conferences around the world and has won a number of international awards, including Thailand’s Prince Mahidol Award (1993) and the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal Award (2000). In 1999 he received the Order of Rio Branco, the highest civil honor given by the Government of Brazil.

Links:

• Interview with Ciro de Quadros in PAHO/Reflexiones
• For additional information you can read the press release on BBVA Foundation’s Frontiers of Knowledge Award
• Web note on award from Sabin Vaccine Institute
• Link to book: Vaccines Preventing Disease and Protecting Health
  

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