Professor Pedro Clóvis Junqueira

Clovis Pedro Junqueira, considered a living legend in transfusion medicine in Brazil died on October 2, 2011, at the age of 94 years. Until about 1 or 2 years ago, Professor Junqueira was still active, receiving honors and being interviewed and consulted about the future of hemotherapy in Brazil. He was seen in the library that bears his name at the headquarters of the Brazilian Society of Hematology and Hemotherapy (SBHH), studying, consulting international journals and the internet in order to keep himself up to date. It could not have been different: all his lifetime, Professor Junqueira devoted himself to transfusion medicine in Brazil; he scientifically and personally influenced several generations. The library of the SBHH should now receive in its collection, the books of this illustrious visitor, in fact many rare books in perfect condition were already donated while he was alive. Hematology will always have the works that he edited: 'the Essentials of Blood Transfusion', 'Peri-Natal Hemolytic Disease' and last year with Jacob Rosenblit and myself, 'Clinical Transfusion Medicine', a book that summarizes his philosophy of changing the transfusion medicine specialist inside the blood bank from someone who follows prescriptions to being active with colleagues of other specialties, and especially with his patients. Born in Sao Luiz, Maranhão on June 1, 1916, he was still a child he moved with his family to Rio de Janeiro, the then capital of the country. His Portuguese father was hoping to find opportunities in trade, but he became attracted to medicine and in 1939 he graduated at the National Medicine School of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. He was a disciple of Walter Oswaldo Cruz and his training included stints in England, Germany, Holland, France, Argentina and the United States, as he passed in first place in the Postgraduate Course in Hematology at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute. In 1945, he began to devote himself to transfusion medicine and founded a service in Rio de Janeiro. Later, he joined Prof. Dr. Hildebrando Monteiro Marinho, merging hematology and transfusion medicine into one single unit. With Walter Oswaldo Cruz he gave the first course of specialization in hematology in Manguinhos in 1949. In the same year, he was one of the organizers of the First Paulista Congress of Hematology. The event started on June 8, lasted four days and produced 30 recommendations, including the establishment of the First Brazilian Congress. Along with Carlos da Silva Lacaz, Oswaldo Mellone and Michel Abu Jamra, he founded the Sociedade Brasileira de Hematologia e Hemoterapia (Brazilian Society of Hematology and Hematology), scheduling the First Brazilian Hematology Congress for the 21 to 26 of May 1950, at which time the society became official. Besides Pedro Junqueira Clovis, the organizing committee included Walter Oswaldo Cruz, Heraldo Maciel, Artur Cavalcante, João Maia Mendonça, Frederico Ottensooser, Oswaldo Mellone, Michel Abu Jamra, Ruy Faria, Carlos da Silva Lacaz, Menandro Novaes, Côrtes Villela and Carlos Estevão Frimm. In 1951, Professor Junqueira presented papers on blood groups in Brazilian Indians in two international conferences in Portugal and Italy. In the same year, he participated in Submitted: 1/24/2011 Accepted: 1/25/2011