Instituto Conmemorativo Gorgas de Estudios de la Salud

This triumph, led by Dr. William C. Gorgas in the first years of the 20th century, was achieved by one of the largest and most successful community-level public health interventions ever recorded in the history of medicine.

Since then, many emerging and reemerging diseases have been studied at GMI and physicians and scientists of many nationalities working there have made significant contributions to medicine in the tropics.

GMI has contributed to better the health of Panama and the Central American countries by acting as a reference laboratory to diagnose diseases like yellow fever, malaria, measles, arbovirus febrile illness, viral encephalitidies, influenza, dengue and hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome.

[3] Most recently GMI became a World Bank-Pan-American Health Organization reference laboratory for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) for the Central American region.

In 2006, GMI signed an MOU with the Department of Health and Human Services and was also awarded two grants, one to increase its virology diagnostic capacity and to strengthen the surveillance of influenza virus in Panama and Central America and the other to develop a Regional Training Center for community health care workers of the Central American Region.