Dr. Carlos Finlay Annual
International Medical Conference
Sponsored by SILAMP
SILAMP has celebrated the achievements of Dr. Carlos Finlay of Cuba, by hosting The Dr. Carlos Finlay Conference, for more than twenty years. This multidisciplinary medical conference's goal is to provide access to the most advanced knowledge on different medical topics. The most recent conference was celebrated last March 2017 at the Philadelphia Medical Society. The topic in the 2017 year was “The contamination of water and the healthcare of our community." Colleagues from Temple University Hospital, University of Pennsylvania, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the United Nations of Greater Philadelphia participated. The conference also provided continued medical education credits via Temple University School of Medicine.
Dr Carlos Finlay was a Cuban epidemiologist (December 3, 1833 – August 20, 1915) who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine seven times throughout his career. He is well known for his research of Yellow Fever by discovering how mosquitoes transmitted the disease to healthy people. Dr. Finlay determined that it was transmitted through a vector (mosquito Aedes aegypti) and presented his work at the 1881 International Sanitary Conference. Further studies provided his guidelines on how to control the disease by controlling the mosquito population.
In the words of General Leonard Wood, a physician and U.S. military governor of Cuba in 1900: "The confirmation of Dr. Finlay's doctrine is the greatest step forward made in medical science since Jenner's discovery of the vaccination [for smallpox]."He is a graduate of Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, and also studied in England and France.