The flu has accompanied humanity since time immemorial. However, thanks to advances in science and medicine, its diagnosis became more precise during the 19th and 20th centuries. After the impact of the Russian flu near the end of the 19th century, the early 20th century saw the emergence of the Spanish flu, one of the greatest pandemics in human history, which caused millions of deaths and left deep marks on societies at political, social, economic, cultural, and demographic levels. Nearly three decades later, a new flu epidemic, the so-called Asian flu, originating from the Asian continent, reached various regions of the globe, including Europe. It arrived in Portugal in August 1957, coming from the African continent, peaked in October of that year, and was felt most intensely in Lisbon.
The aim of our presentation is essentially to understand how Portuguese society, particularly political and health authorities, dealt with and responded to the Asian flu; to analyze the measures taken at the time and their impact on the lives of the population. To this end, we will primarily use medical and general press sources, as well as hospital reports and records.

In Brazil and other Latin American countries, historically, there have been intertwinements between leishmaniasis and Chagas disease, either because both are related to the Trypanosomatidae, or because of the institutions and professional trajectories of those who dedicated themselves to the study of these diseases. When visceral leishmaniasis emerged as a public health problem in 1934, Evandro Chagas, a specialist in the disease discovered by his father, headed the commission that studied Chagas disease, together with Cecílio Romaña, author of a fundamental discovery for mapping its distribution on the American continent. At the Evandro Chagas Institute, in the Brazilian Amazon, Ralph Lainson, Jeffrey Shaw and collaborators demonstrated from 1965 onwards that Leishmania populations, their vectors and hosts were much more heterogeneous than previously imagined. They also studied the first autochthonous outbreak of Chagas disease in the region. The hypothesis that the patients had acquired the infection orally constitutes an important milestone in the current problem of disease transmission through the consumption of certain foods. These issues were debated at the annual meetings of Basic Research in Chagas Disease, inaugurated in the mid-1970s. Such meetings were fundamental for the condensation of a critical mass in these two important frontiers of Brazilian tropical medicine, at a time when the two diseases were spreading through urban areas and regions until then considered free.