Joao Bosco Guerreiro da Silva

Joao Bosco Guerreiro da Silva
Department of Acupuncture
Brazilian Medical Acupuncture College, Scientific director, Brazil

Biography

João Bosco Guerreiro da Silva graduated in medicine in 1983 and after his medical residency in Public Health travelled to the Amazon region to work with indigenous people there. There he realized the need for alternative methods to enable him to work in such remote areas and he started to study Acupuncture and Phytotherapy. He was then invited to work in a newly-founded acupuncture service in Rio Preto Medical College, São José do Rio Preto, state of São Paulo, Brazil, in 1989. He began to work part-time in College and as a private acupuncture practitioner in his clinic. He studied Traditional Acupuncture in Brazil, Cuba and China and helped to develop a particular acupuncture mixed model, joining the eastern and western methods, and started to teach young doctors. In 1999 he obtained his masters degree in Public Health with Evaluation of an acupuncture service in a school hospital and published his results in Brazilian journals. In 2001 he organized the first acupuncture surgical anaesthesia course and participated in the creation of the Acupuncture Medical Residence in Brazil; in 2004 Rio Preto Medical College became the first faculty to offer it. In 2005 he completed his PhD thesis on Benefits of acupuncture in the main non-obstetrical complaints in pregnancy, some of which was published in Acupuncture in Medicine with one article being awarded first prize at the ICMART congress 2007 in Barcelona. In recent years he has become Head of the Faculty’s acupuncture service, continued clinical and experimental research in pregnancy, taught medical residents and students, and is scientific director of Brazilian Medical Acupuncture College.