Hospital Mário Penna was born in 1971, with the creation of the Associação dos Amigos do Hospital Mário Penna, in Belo Horizonte. The initiative is the result of the ideal of a group of young people whose objective was to bring dignity to terminal cancer patients.
The Hospital was the starting point of the Instituto Mário Penna’s activities.
It all started with a ward at Hospital Borges da Costa, dedicated exclusively to terminal cancer patients, which was named “Wing Mário Penna” in honor of the tireless human being and pioneer physician in cancer treatment in Minas Gerais.
In 1963, the state government prepared a shed, in the Santa Efigênia neighborhood, where these terminally ill patients should be taken. The place was adapted to house these patients, but, as it did not have trained health professionals or doctors, it was popularly known as a “depot” because patients were left there, helpless and unassisted, to spend their last days.
This inhuman space operated for about two years, without the minimum conditions or structure. The horror and abandonment scenario attracted the attention of people with a strong sense of religiosity, who volunteered to help improve the lives of people suffering from the disease.
Volunteer actions gained momentum. Visits became more frequent and the chorus of these people began to resound through the city, first in the parishes, then taking over the streets of Belo Horizonte. That was when, in 1971, with the intense work of volunteering and alert to the neglect of patients in the “depot”, the Association of Friends of the Mário Penna Hospital was born, making the chorus for humanized treatment more and more intense, in door-to-door campaigns. door, churches and student movements, even with the still great neglect of the authorities.
Today, the Hospital is one of the four units of the Mário Penna Institute, and it is totally focused on treating cancer patients from the Unified Health System (SUS). It has 58 inpatient beds, an outpatient clinic, a chemotherapy service, radiology, a clinical analysis laboratory, operating rooms and an intermediate care unit.
In 2016, there were more than 260,000 cancer procedures and more than 45,000 consultations for cancer patients, made available through a trained team dedicated to providing quality and humanized care.
Today, Mário Penna Hospital performs around 15,000 chemotherapy sessions annually and has an interdisciplinary team, an experienced and qualified clinical staff that, together with the care team, offers patients and their caregivers quality and humane treatment.