Antivenins in Brazil: prepartion

Abstract

In 1901, Vital-Brazil Mineiro da Campanha established in the outskirts of São Paulo, then a small village, a very modest laboratory to produce antibubonic sera to control an epidemic situation that was occurring and began to prepare antivenins. This laboratory was transformed by the state government into the Instituto Butantan, located in the area with the same name, today a district inside the city of São Paulo. The Institute has grown in the model of the Pasteur Institute in France, with production laboratories, a large number of horses to provide the hyperimmune sera, cows for the smallpox vaccine production, and several basic research laboratories. The federal program planned that Instituto Butantan should produce about 70% of the antivenins. This program provided an unique opportunity to increase production, on one hand, and to use the program to innovate technology and build new installations, on the other.