CONEXÕES INVISÍVEIS: As instituições da profilaxia da lepra em São Paulo

The nationally coordinated sanitary policy in force between the 1920s and 1980s to deal with leprosy was based on isolating the sick and separating them from their children. The system implemented to control the epidemic in São Paulo became a model and resulted in the construction of a care network made up of the following institutions: five colony-asylums, four dispensaries and three preventories, administered by the Department of Leprosy Prophylaxis and fifteen regional inspectorates. The asylums were listed by Condephaat between 2016 and 2018 and, although they were independent processes, the same justification was used for the whole, recognizing the importance of preserving the systemic character adopted as a solution to the problems. However, we question the ability to deepen discussions in the urban, heritage and social contexts. The hypothesis of this research is that there is a knowledge gap in relation to the whole system created, without which it is not possible to extend the impact of preservation beyond the physical heritage, given that it is the interweaving of the memories of the people related to the process that makes it possible to understand the territorial extension of the network. The intention is to map all the equipment and the processes following the system's deactivation, discussing the current functioning and use of the buildings, the neighborhoods formed around them and the interventions that culminated in the erasure of the system's memory.