Ana Justina Ferreira Néri, also known as Anna Nery was born in the interior of Bahia, on December 13, 1814. Married since the age of 23 to Isidoro Antônio Nery, Anna became a widow at 29, assuming the responsibility of taking care of her three young children alone. . The older two graduated in medicine, the younger followed a military career.

With the beginning of the Paraguayan War in 1865, Anna's children were summoned to fight on the fronts of battle. Unhappy with the separation, she writes to the president of the Province of Bahia, the adviser Manuel Pinho de Sousa Dantas, that she be given the right to accompany her children and brother during the fighting, or that, at least, she could provide services in hospitals in Rio Grande do Sul.

Accepting the request, he traveled to Rio Grande do Sul where he learned from the sisters of charity of the brotherhood of São Vicente de Paulo basic notions of nursing. Even without adequate conditions, such as: poor hygiene, lack of materials and excess of patients, Anna drew attention, for her dedication to work as a nurse, for all the hospitals where she passed.

What did you do?

During the war Anna Nery faced health chaos in the country when the prominent diseases of the time were cholera, typhoid, dysentery, malaria and smallpox. Throughout the Paraguayan War, he served in military hospitals in Salto, Corrientes (Argentina), Humaitá and Asunción (Paraguay), as well as in field hospitals, in front of military operations. In his daily contact with doctors, in the joint treatment of obligations, he acquired therapeutic knowledge, but common sense combined with his gaze as a mother who cares for sick children often made his opinion prevail to doctors.

The nurse managed to transform the local health reality, imposing minimum conditions of hygiene so that diseases did not spread and wounds were treated. In the fight for the recovery of patients, resources of the time were used, such as iodine, potassium chloride, fenicated water and cauterization, in addition to drinking herbal medicines. It is considered the first non-religious person to dedicate itself to the health care of a community or population.

After the war, he returned to his hometown, where he was paid great tributes. On her return to Brazil, Anna Nery brought three small orphans - children of soldiers who disappeared in the fighting - whom she started to educate as if they were her legitimate children. Sensitized by this fact, D. Pedro II awarded her the Humanitarian Medal and the Medal of the Campaign of Paraguay, in addition to a lifetime pension to help her raise the children she had adopted.

Anna died in the city of Rio de Janeiro at the age of 65, on May 20, 1880.

In his honor, in 1923, the first official Brazilian nursing school was named Anna Nery.

In 2009, through Law No. 12,105 , Anna Nery became the first woman to enter the Book of Heroes and Heroines of the Fatherland, deposited in the Pantheon of Liberty and Democracy, in Brasília (DF).