[Historical notes about the antique Infectious Diseases Unit at the Hospital de Niños Manuel Arriarán]

Measles and pertussis epidemics that occurred in Chile at the beginning of XX Century definitively motivated Government authorities to put up hospitals dedicated to infancy attendance. At first it was the hospital settled at Matucana Street (Roberto del Rio) and afterwards since 1913, the Manuel Arriarán Hospital in the southern-east districts of Santiago. In this last one it was located the first Infectious Diseases ward organized in Chile, opened in 1922 and built according to most recent isolation and aseptic technics, projected by the proper Sub-Administrator of Manuel Arriarán Hospital, Professor Alejandro del Rio MD, taking place early to the system that years later should be implemented at the Claude Bernard Infectious Diseases Hospital in Paris and at Hospital de Enfermedades Infecciosas Prof. Dr. Lucio Cordova at Santiago, Chile. Doctors Alfredo Commentz MD and Eugenio Cienfuegos MD, Sub-Director and Chief of Internal Medicina Department in Manuel Arriarán Hospital, respectively, had a relevant role in making rules and the development of this department. Distinguished faculties were members of the Infectious Diseases Department, standing out Professor Adalberto Steeger, an important promoter of Pediatric Infectious Diseases specialty in Chile. Approximately 30 years after, the Infectious Diseases Department was substituted by the Infectious Diseases Clinical Units attached to Internal Medicine Departments A and B at the same hospital.