The Venezuelan sanitation authority and the incorporation of physicians exiled from the Spanish Civil War

In 1914, while Spain was making agreements to modernize its scientific and sanitary structure, Venezuela started to structure a sanitation authority following international models, in line with Pan Americanism and the controls for the opening of the Panama Canal, for which is received sponsorship from the Rockefeller Foundation as of 1913. In 1931, the Second Spanish Republic sent ever greater numbers of scholars to study in the United States and established a public health system along the lines of the administrative models for sanitation and technical units for investigation and control as proposed by the Foundation. The Spanish Civil War interrupted this process and Venezuela seized the moment to hire the exiled doctors and nurses and incorporate them into its new Ministry for Sanitation and Social Welfare, created in 1936.