Thursday

José María Bengoa Lecanda, pioneer in the fight against malnutrition, passed away in Bilbao

Dr. Bengoa

José María Bengoa, physician and pioneer in the fight against malnutrition, passed away on Saturday January 16th at 96 years old. Nutritionist with an internationally recognised career, he was an important member of the World Health Organization (WHO) and person rooted in the Basque community in Venezuela, he received the Sabino Arana Award in 2007 for his fruitful and important professional work.

Bengoas was born in Bilbao on April 20th 2913, studied medicine in Valladolid and when the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, he served as a doctor with the Basque Army, where he organized a vast network of aid posts and hospitals. In 1938 he exiled to Venezuela being very young, and began his medical practice in rural Sanare in Lara State, where he began to identify hunger and the root cause of most diseases of his patients. My frequent visits to that country being sistered with our Canary Islands, where he lived for several decades, allowed me to know him better in his own environment.

Later in 1944, he assumed the position of Chief of the Nutrition Section of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Venezuela. Founder of the National Institute of Nutrition, School of Nutrition and Dietetics of UCV, of the Cavendes Foundation (which bared his name for some years), Strategic Food Program (PROAL) and the National Council for Food in Venezuela.

Internationally he has held very important positions such as Member of WHO experts, Interregional Adviser and Head of the WHO Department of Nutrition for 20 years. Author of several books along with distinguished nutritionists such as Prof. Beaton or Prof. Scrimshaw, among other, and numerous articles on the procedures to combat malnutrition and hunger in the world, and recently also a brilliant chapter on the history of community nutrition in our book, Nutrition and Public Health.

Healthy deputy during the first Basque Government after the Transition, and a great expert in public health and nutrition, made strong conceptual and methodological issues, including those aimed at the implementation of Osakidetza from his experience in the WHO. To Bengoa –father of the current health minister for the Basque Government and my good friend Rafael- is also the initiative for Nutritional Recovery Centers, issued today throughout the world and particularly in Gambia and now also in Guinea Bissau of the hand of Nutrition Without Borders.

Because of his great career and honourable work, Dr. Bengoa has been awarded numerous honours and awards worldwide. The Pan-American Health Organization on the occasion of the commemorative activities of its centennial, awarded him the distinction of “Public Health Hero” and more recently received the investiture as Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Alicante. In 2006, on the occasion of the celebration in Barcelona of the First World Congress on Nutrition and Public Health as a president of Honour -along with his close friend Nevin Scrimshaw (first Director of INCAP) and Igor de Garin-, was founded the Award of the Spanish Society of Community Nutrition (SENC) Jose Maria Bengoa, who also distinguished our late master Prof. Jose Mataix and Prof. Eduardo Atalah of the University of Chile in 2008. Despite the awards received, our teacher and friend was worthy far more than they inexplicably never awarded. Well, to my understanding, it is because he never sought or claimed awards, which can not be said of all who do receive them.

Bengoa was genuinely from Bilbao. He was born in the old town and never forgot that. I met him thanks to our good friend Dr. Javier Aranceta and has since been part of my life, both him and his wonderful wife Amaia Renteria, I keep following him from one side to another year after year, and all his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren are part of my extended family. To all of them, we send our warmest embrace with all our affection and our love.

The truth is that it was very sad news for all who knew and admired him. Gone are so many memories and complicity…ahead is to perpetuate his legacy and work. During the solemn inauguration of the First World Congress on Nutrition and Public Health held in Barcelona on September 28th 2006 he delivered next to me an elegant and unique keynote speech squeezing in his whole career and convictions that are recorded forever in my memory, as well as with the speech he gave in Las Palmas on November 28th 1998, as closing the First Latin American Congress of Nutrition and Public Health, I would hasten my interest in nutrition and boosted me to found years later our NGO Nutrition Without Borders. In the fledgling stage of the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium and the culminating end we gave him the First SENC Award to the international trajectory in the field of nutrition and public health. I remember that he loved the huge fossilified shell that represented the award.

His words and deeds, in addition to moving us, he has marked our paths, much of the good we have done since we met him we owe to him.

Thank you Jose Maria.
Rest in peace.

Lluis Serra-Majem
President of the Mediterranean Diet Foundation
President of the NGO Nutrition without Borders