Born: 13 December 1814, Brazil
Died: 20 May 1880
Country most active: Brazil
Also known as: Ana Justina Ferreira de Jesus
Considered the first modern professional nurse in Brazil, Ana Néri is best known for her work during the Paraguayan War.
Married at 23 to a naval officer, Néri was often alone as her husband was at sea. Widowed at 29, she was left to care for their three sons alone; two would grow up to be doctors while the third joined the army.
When Brazil joined the Triple Alliance during the Paraguayan War, Néri’s sons and two brothers were all called to duty. She wrote to the governor of Bahia, where she had lived all her life, offering to care for injured soldiers. Leaving Bahia for the first time, she went to work with the small and under-resourced army health corps, caring for more than 6,000 wounded soldiers alongside Vincentian nuns in a hospital in Corrientes, and later in Salto, Humaitá, Curupaiti, and Asunción.
Néri used her inherited wealth to establish a nursing house in Paraguay, which was at the time occupied by Brazilian forces, and worked there until the end of the war in 1870. When she returned to Brazil, she received several honors, including a lifelong pension from Emperor Pedro II, which she used to provide education for four orphans she had brought home with her from Paraguay.
In 1926, the country’s first official nursing school was named for her, and she was added to the Pantheon of the Fatherland and Freedom monument in Brasília in the 2010s.