Ipas's Leila Adesse and Brazilian State Minister of Health José Gomes Temporão

The Brazilian Ministry of Health honored Ipas Brazil’s Country Director Leila Adesse for her 25 years of service in improving women’s health in Brazil. State Minister of Health José Gomes Temporão presented Dr. Adesse with a plaque at a national seminar on women's health and rights on March 9.

At the seminar, Dr. Adesse met with Dr. Olimpio Moraes. Earlier in March, Moraes and other doctors ended the twin pregnancy of a nine-year-old girl from the state of Pernambuco who had allegedly been raped by her stepfather. This decision aroused strong opposition from Brazil’s Catholic Church, despite the fact that the pregnancy was endangering the girl’s life. Brazilian bishops had threatened to excommunicate the girl’s mother and the doctors, but recently backed down from that claim after national and international outrage.

Moraes’ connection with Ipas did not begin at the seminar, however: Moraes had received Ipas training on human rights, values clarification, and the use of MVA. Moraes has gone on to train other doctors as well.

Dr. Adesse is a pediatrician with a strong background in adolescent health. She began work with Ipas as a training coordinator and took over full-time leadership of Ipas Brazil in 2001. Since 1984, Dr. Adesse has worked on public-health research in maternal and child health care and as a guest professor in the National School of Public Health-Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.

Working as a consultant for the Ministry of Health, she coordinated a multiprofessional technical group adapting the norms of PAISM (a legal assistance program in women’s health care) for use in educational materials used to train obstetrician-gynecologists in all hospitals of the Brazilian health-care system.

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