Vera Cordeiro (born 1950 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a social entrepreneur and physician.
Cordeiro was awarded the Brazil Ashoka Fellow for reforming the Brazilian health care system. She worked at the public Hospital da Lagoa as a pediatrician which serves some of Rio de Janeiro’s poorest areas including the Baixada Fluminense (lowland slums) and Rocinha (Latin America’s largest favela).
Children are typically hospitalized, suffering from serious cases of pneumonia, tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, anaemia and quite commonly leptospirosis and subsequently released without having the necessary resources to continue their treatment at home. Being released into the conditions that make children sick in the first place results in a constant hospital admission/re-admission cycle.
Cordeiro founded Associação Saúde Criança Renascer in 1991, which works with severely ill children of poor families to help them receive nutrition, sanitation, and psychological support after discharge from hospital. Renascer tries to address the root causes that prevent families from providing adequate care. The approach combines government, community, and professional support networks. Renascer has been recognized as a national model and has spread to 14 other associations across Brazil.