Opinion – Fernando Ganem: That’s how a hospital is born

On November 28 of this year, the Sociedade Beneficente de Senhoras Hospital Sírio-Libanês celebrates 100 years of a history of commitment and acceptance, of philanthropy and social responsibility towards Brazilian society.

In 1921, while the city of São Paulo was transforming itself into the metropolis it is today, a group of immigrant women of Syrian and Lebanese origin met at Adma Jafet’s home, in the Paraíso neighborhood, in São Paulo, to discuss the beginnings of what would become the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital.

The desire was to contribute to building the city’s future, but also to create a place to support everyone who needed help, in return for the welcome that the families themselves had received when they arrived on Brazilian soil.

During the construction of the headquarters, the hospital faced challenges that were beyond its control. With the beginning of World War II, the government of the State of São Paulo decided to expropriate the hospital building, which had just been completed, for the creation of the Cadet Preparatory School.

With no building, the dream of the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital was postponed – taking almost two decades until it returned to the Ladies’ Beneficent Society. But the hospital only actually started operating in 1961, as a general hospital of high complexity and which today serves all specialties, such as oncology, cardiology, urology and orthopedics, in addition to emergency and intensive care.

As soon as the hospital started operating, cutting-edge medicine became one of the pillars of our institution. Shortly after opening, we began to expand our services. In 1972, the General Radiotherapy and Supervoltage Clinic began operating, the first service of its kind with a linear accelerator in Brazil.

Then, the first intensive care unit (ICU) was inaugurated in a private hospital in Brazil. At that time, there was not even an intensive care specialist in our country. It was the team of professionals from this unit that began to establish this practice and to standardize the routines of care for critically ill patients.

The Sírio-Libanês ICU attracted many health professionals, and realizing its vocation to teach and lead large transformation movements in medical care, the institution created, in 1978, the Center for Studies and Research (Cepe), which has grown to today became the Syrian-Lebanese Teaching and Research.

As well as teaching and research, philanthropy has accompanied the Sírio-Libanês since its foundation. The philanthropic institution currently serves the same number of patients from public and private health services.

In addition to the Hospital’s units in São Paulo and Brasília, today we also have the Sírio-Libanês Social Responsibility Institute, which maintains an agreement with the health services of the city and state of São Paulo. The institution currently has five health units under its management, such as the Menino Jesus Municipal Hospital, in São Paulo. This is one of the Sírio-Libanês social responsibility arms, but it is not the only one.

Sírio-Libanês also has two outpatient clinics that provide free care to patients from the Unified Health System: one for pediatrics and another for women with breast cancer, taking in children and women living in São Paulo. Known in the Bela Vista region as the “Sírio post”, this care for the population was yet another example of the institution’s constant concern to expand the scope of its social responsibility.

Sírio-Libanês is also a partner of the Ministry of Health, through the SUS Institutional Development Support Program (PROADI-SUS), offering management for better health care throughout Brazil.

There were many medical achievements that I can mention, such as the hospital’s first live donor liver transplant, in 1995, or the first PET/CT equipment in Latin America, in 2002. In September 2000, a patient from Sírio-Libanês it was operated together with surgeons at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, USA, through telemedicine. The event was broadcast simultaneously to the participants of the 18th World Congress of Endourology.

And during all these great milestones, the hospital has always maintained its care quality indicators close to the main world centers, and, in some cases, we even surpassed them. Our institution has always remained philanthropic and with a genuine social commitment. A recipe for success that will guide the Sírio-Libanês Hospital Ladies Beneficent Society for its next hundred years, and beyond.