Tribute to Dr. Abraham Horwitz (1910-2000) Pan American Sanitary Bureau Regional Meeting on Epidemiology and Health Situation Analysis

• Editorial: Tribute to Dr. Abraham Horwitz: “Epidemiology in Latin America“ (1961) • Health Situation Analysis: − Update on the leading causes of mortality on the United StatesMexico Border: 1995-1997 − Situation of foot-and-mouth disease in South America − Update on HIV/AIDS surveillance in the Americas • Norms and Standards in Epidemiology: − Case Definitions: Anthrax, Brucellosis and Rabies − Epidemiological Calendar 2001 Dr. Abraham Horwitz, a world-recognized expert in public health and nutrition who served as Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) from 1958 to 1975, died on 10 July in Washington, DC. He led PAHO through a period of important political, economic, and social changes. Through his important work in the field of public health, he emphasized the relationship between health and economic development, the strengthening of health statistics and the importance of health services organization. Dr. Horwitz also considered epidemiology as an essential tool for the progress of public health and promoted its development in the Americas. He believed that “the solution to many health problems in the Americas will be found using epidemiological processes.” In 1961, during the Symposium on World Medicine at Yale University, he presented three areas of epidemiological practice that became the axes of the development of epidemiology in the Region of the Americas over the last decades: the practice of epidemiology in health services, epidemiological research, and training in epidemiology. PAHO’s cooperation strategy for the strengthening of national epidemiological capacities in the countries of the Region was defined from these perspectives. In the 1980s, the main aspects of this strategy included the support to technical cooperation for the development of direct epidemiological services in the countries, the dissemination of epidemiological information, the support for resources mobilization and cooperation among countries, the collaboration with the countries to determine research needs, and the reorientation of existing training programs in medicine and public health. In the area of research in particular, Dr. Horwitz was precursor of the collaboration among countries, when he promoted what he called “an intellectual common market.” Various studies emerged from these ideas, such as the multicentric infant mortality studies directed by Puffer and Serrano and others on malnutrition in conjunction with infectious diseases directed by Mata and Scrimshaw, among others.