40 years of FCM

EUSTÁQUIO GOMES

ABy highlighting the 40 years of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Jornal da Unicamp pulls the thread of a long and eventful history that, after 20 years, resulted in the establishment of Unicamp in 1966. FCM was, therefore, the embryo of a larger project whose quality and density have to do with the persistent struggle of organized society in Campinas and, later, with the ingenuity of Zeferino Vaz.

That Zeferino, in the years preceding the creation of the FCM, was against the idea of ​​a medical school in Campinas - he was the director of the USP Faculty of Medicine in Ribeirão Preto at the time - is not such a relevant fact. It has its picturesque side. More important is what the creator of Unicamp was able to achieve afterwards, transforming a private defeat into a collective victory.

From a historical point of view, the achievement of the community of Campinas in obtaining its medical school is an achievement as important as what came later. It is unlikely that Unicamp would be what it is if there had not previously been an FCM and a handful of tireless men who, for years on end, fought tenaciously for the materialization of their idea. The distance in time from this organized struggle allows us to see, in perspective, a project management model similar to what an NGO with well-defined goals would do today.

As well-defined as the goal of those citizens was the work of implementing and consolidating the academic, scientific and services of the FCM in the four decades that followed, the results of which are clearly visible today. Hundreds and thousands of people participated in this effort, most of whom still continue to make their contribution to FCM and the health units that emerged from it, in what is today the largest and most organic hospital complex in the interior of the State.