Brazil’s First Tissue Center: Bringing New Life to the Medical Field
Dr. Anna Barbara Proietti (Brazil ’00)
Coordinator of Graduate Program, Faculdade da Saude e Ecologia Humana
Reflecting on her fellowship, Dr. Proietti says, “This experience shows that inspiration, provided by the EF opportunity, allied to patience and persistence, and to the right networking makes anything possible!” In 2000, she traveled to the U.S for two months to participate in the Multi Nation Program to represent Brazil. At the time, she was president of the Minas Gerais State Center of Hematology and Blood Transfusion (Fundaçâo Hemominas), a center responsible for the majority of transfusions in the Minas Gerais State of Brazil.
On fellowship, Anna Barbara’s visit to the Northwest Tissue Center in Seattle, one of the largest tissue centers in U.S., became central to the future of Hemominas and its ability to adapt and innovate new medical treatments. Dr. Proietti’s meeting with then-Director Dr. Michael Strong (who later became the president of the American Association of Blood Banks) had a direct influence on her career and the progression of medicine in Brazil. During their meeting, Dr. Strong urged Dr. Proietti to set up a tissue center at her organization, Fundaçâo Hemominas, so that the facility could have skin, bone, tendons, corneas and other tissues for grafts and transplants. This struck Proietti as a powerful idea, since a multi-tissue center of this type did not exist in Brazil.
When Proietti returned to Brazil, the idea continued to resonate with her. Dr. Strong visited Hemominas, and seeing the amplitude of the facility’s operations, he insisted that together they would construct a tissue and cell center.
To begin, Dr. Strong hosted two physicians from Hemominas at his facility in Seattle so that they could learn more about biological tissue handling. With Dr. Strong’s assistance, Hemominas partnered with Héma-Québec, the blood and tissue center in Québec, Canada. Dr. Francine Décary, then-president of Héma-Québec, hosted several technicians, architects and engineers to educate them on various aspects of the creation of a successful tissue center.
After 12 years, this seed planted during a conversation on Anna Barbara’s Eisenhower Fellowship finally grew into reality as the Cetebio Project (Centro de Tecidos Biológicos de Minas Gerais, or Center of Biological Tissues). Cetebio’s first unit, the Cord Blood Cell Bank, has been built and opened for operation in June 2013. There is now a skin center, a musculoskeletal tissue center, and a cornea bank available to the population of Minas Gerais State, and all of Brazil.
In addition to the success in Brazil, Proietti used her expertise on blood transfusions to start the Center for Treatment of Sickle Cell Anemia in Kumasi, Ghana in 2010. The Hemominas team met with Ghana’s Minister of Health and the Brazilian Ambassador to Ghana to get the project underway. According to Proietti, the center has been invaluable to Ghana and will save innumerable lives. Proietti’s hard work with her organization has not gone unnoticed. In 2004, she received the National Prize for Public Sector Management, and in 2006, she received two National Awards for Public Administration. In 2010, Proietti received the Medalha de Honra da Inconfidência for her work with Hemominas. This honor, the highest honor in the State of Minas Gerais, is conferred annually to people and institutions that have distinguished themselves for the benefit of Minas Gerais State and for Brazil.
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