Ana Justina Ferreira Neri

Ana Néri was a Brazilian nurse who volunteered to care for the wounded soldiers of the Triple Alliance during the Paraguayan War. She was the first Brazilian woman to practice nursing in war scenarios, and she is considered the pioneer of nursing in Brazil. She was born in 1814 in a village in Bahia, and married a navy commander at the age of 23. She became a widow at 29, and raised her three sons by herself. Two of them became doctors, and one joined the army. In 1865, when Brazil joined the war against Paraguay, Ana Néri wrote a letter to the governor of Bahia, offering her services as a nurse. She left her home for the first time and traveled to the battlefields, where she learned the basics of nursing from the Vincentian nuns. She worked in several hospitals in Argentina and Paraguay, taking care of more than 6,000 soldiers. She also used her own money to found a nursing house in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, which was occupied by the Brazilian army. She lost her son Justiniano and a nephew in the war. After the war ended in 1870, she returned to Brazil with four orphans that she adopted. She received many honors and medals for her humanitarian work, and a lifelong pension from Emperor Pedro II. She died in 1880 in Rio de Janeiro, at the age of 65. In 1926, the first official Brazilian school of nursing was named after her, and in 2009, she was added to the Book of the Fatherland Heroes and the Pantheon of the Fatherland and Freedom.