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Aparecida Gomes Pinto Garcia was born in Itanhandu, Minas Gerais, on June 26th 1922. At the age of 16, she moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she was admitted at the National School of Medicine of the University of Brazil, located in Praia Vermelha, in 1940. While she was still a student, Dr. Garcia started a traineeship at the Instituto Fernandes Figueira (IFF), affiliated at that time with the National Child Department of the Ministry of Health, where she worked with Mário Mesquita and Arlindo de Assis. After graduating in Medicine, she took up the Service of Pathological Anatomy at the IFF, where she would exercise her care, research and teaching activities during the next 58 years. In 1970, the IFF was incorporated in the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ) and turned into a reference institution for care and professional training in obstetrics, pediatrics, perinatal and pediatric pathology and, nowadays, also in Fetal Medicine and Clinical Genetics.


In 1949, the National Child Department, through its director, Martagão Gesteira, invited Dr. Edith L. Potter, pathologist of the Chicago Lying-in Hospital at that time, to spend six months in Rio de Janeiro to train and teach Pediatric Pathology to a group of Brazilian pathologists, which included Dr. Anadil Roselli and Dr. Aparecida Garcia. In our country, Edith Potter was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Brazil. Dr. Potter exerted a decisive influence in the life and career of Dr. Aparecida Garcia, as a model of work and dedication to Pediatric Pathology, an influence that expanded to all pathologists who took an internship at the IFF, as well as to obstetricians and pediatricians who were trained at the Service for Pathological Anatomy of the same institute.


At the IFF, Dr. Garcia, together with the head of the Maternity and other obstetricians and neonatologists, instituted the anatomoclinical session in Perinatology, called the “Fetus Club” for many years, as well as clinical-pathological discussions with the Pediatric Surgery and Clinical Pediatrics Services, which included the obligatory participation of resident physicians. Outside the context of the IFF, she participated for several decades in the Pathology meetings at the Santa Casa de Misericórdia, presided by her colleague and great friend Dr. Manoel Barreto Neto, with whose support she faced professional issues related to prejudices against women active in Medicine, and particularly Pathological Anatomy.

Her professional life was marked by an extensive scientific production, with numerous publications in national and foreign periodicals and several book chapters, besides an intense participation as a speaker, teacher or presenting author in Congresses held by the Pathology, Pediatrics and Gynecology and Obstetrics Societies. Her most important work is related to congenital infections, particularly toxoplasmosis, and viral infections, which she researched on until the end of her life. She also collaborated as an “ad hoc” consultant for international and Brazilian journals, such as the Journal of Pediatrics.

She was a CNPq researcher almost throughout her professional career, even after her compulsory retirement at the age of 70, when she continued to develop her research at the Fernandes Figueira Institute.

Although she did not have a formal Master’s degree or PhD, due to her “Renowned Knowledge” title, she was frequently invited for graduate examination boards at the Federal University Fluminense and the Federal University of Minas Gerais, among others. Moreover, she also lectured in graduate courses in Women’s Health at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.

Dr. Garcia had a strong personality, marked by scientific rigor, discipline and professional integrity, as well as by her preoccupation and involvement with social and humanitarian causes. She was married for more than 50 years with Dr. Afrânio Raul Garcia, pediatrician and professor at the Federal University Fluminense, with whom she had three children and eight grandchildren.

Dr. Aparecida Garcia passed away on April 25th 1999, at the age of 76, still fully active. She left behind studies that were published posthumously, a bibliographic production that is a reference point in Pediatric Pathology, as well as a vast collection of documentation that is kept and preserved by FIOCRUZ.

What is more, she left behind generations of “scientific sons and daughters”, as she called them, people who directly or indirectly received her training and influence in the efforts made to develop and consolidate Pediatric Pathology in our country. From today onwards, the Latin-American Society of Pediatric Pathology expresses the recognition of Brazilian and Latin-American pathologists for her work by instituting the “Aparecida Garcia Award” for the best studies presented during its biannual congress.