Bluger Anatoly (1926-2007)

Bluger Anatoly (1926, Haisyn, Ukraine — 2007) — infectious disease physician, scientist, educator, and healthcare administrator.

Anatoly Bluger graduated from the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute in 1951. From 1951 to 1957, he headed a department at the Republican Clinical Infectious Diseases Hospital in Riga, and later worked at the Department of Infectious Diseases (as assistant, associate professor, from 1956 as professor and department head). From 1957 to 1992, he led the Problem Laboratory for Clinical Biochemistry of Infectious Diseases; from 1961 to 1992, he served as Vice-Rector for Research at the Riga Medical Institute. Between 1964 and 1978, he was the chief infectious disease specialist; from 1978 to 1992, he chaired the Scientific Medical Council of the Latvian Ministry of Health.

In 1965, Anatoly Bluger founded the Latvian Hepatology Center. Since 1992, he served as chairman of the executive board of the Riga hospitals Bikur Holim and Linas Hatzedek. He held a Doctor of Medical Sciences degree since 1964 and became a full member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences in 1978; he was also a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Bluger authored over 1,000 scientific papers, including studies on the biochemistry, morphology, immunology, and chemotherapy of liver and infectious diseases, and 40 books (25 of them textbooks). He held about 70 patents. He proposed the use of nitrofuran for the treatment of infectious diseases, developed a classification of jaundice, described a new type of liver disease — hereditary pigmentary hepatoses, formulated a theory of the mechanism of hyperenzymemia in pathological processes, and advanced a viral-immunogenetic concept of the pathogenesis of viral hepatitis.