Professor Bissaya Barreto, professor of the Faculty of Medicine and President of the Beira Litoral Province Board initiated a campaign in favor of assistance to Hansen’s patients. Over the course of four years, the project of what would become the Hospital Colónia Rovisco Pais was presented in that newspaper.
By Decree-Law Nº 29.122 was created Leprosy Rovisco Pais and named the drafting committees of the program and works, which were part of the doctor-surgeon Bissaya Barreto and architect Carlos Ramos.
In that year, Portuguese legislation established the mandatory admission of infectious patients (Decree-Law Nº 36.450). The Hospital Colónia Rovisco Pais was inaugurated with a big ceremony on the 7th of September. The first patients arrived on October 1st. Inauguration video
The pavilion for infectious diseases and the residential neighborhood for employees began to operate.
On this date, the activity of the Hospital Colónia Rovisco Pais and the mobile brigades allowed the identification of 1889 patients in Portugal.
This year was the first visit by Raoul Follereau, founder of the Association for the Fight against Leprosy. He returned to visit the Hospital Colónia Rovisco Pais in 1968.
Beginning of the edition of the journal of hospitalized patients, with the premise “for the defense and rehabilitation of leprosy patients”.
In 1960, the International Leprology Course was held in Coimbra, under the auspices of the World Health Organization. The year 1963 marked the beginning of a series of Summary Leprology Courses, which started to be held every two years in the Hospital Colónia Rovisco Pais.
The plastic surgery service was created at Hospital Colónia Rovisco Pais. One of the surgeons who developed this specialty in this hospital was Dr. João Veiga Vieira. In 1963 the number of interventions of this type was 95.
The Hospital Colónia Rovisco Pais started to be under the guidance of the Technical Council for Leprology (Decree-Law nº 43,756), which worked with the Leprosy Assistance Institute.
