Background
His father don Manuel A. Pérez was a public servant, reason which had to move to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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Enrique Santiago
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Enrique studied at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras, where he joined Phi Sigma Alpha Fraternity. Later he went to study at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and graduated in 1943. He was teaching Hematology at the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus in 1954, year when the campus graduated its first class.
Career
He was the first Puerto Rican hematologist and he began the formal program at the University of Puerto Rico Hospital. He then returned to Puerto Rico to do his internship at the District Hospital in Fajardo. After serving in the Army Medical Corps he joined the Tropical School of Medicine to do his residency in internal medicine.
At the end of his training, he stayed as a doctor and became acting medical director
In 1950, he moved to Boston to specialize in hematology with the renowned hematologist Doctor William Dameshek in the New England Medical Center of Tufts University. He joined the Interamerican Society of Hematology and, in 1958, he joined the newly founded American Society of Hematology.
That same year, Doctor William Crosby, director of the research laboratory of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center met with Doctor Pérez Santiago to establish a research center at the Rodriguez Military Hospital in San Juan for studying the Tropical sprue, which was at that time an endemic condition on the island and in tropical regions of Asia. In some time the laboratory and the research center were established in the Conference Room 10 of the military hospital.
There were many leading research doctors doing their army internship, studying the cause and treatment of the sprue.
Doctor Pérez Santiago, in collaboration with Doctor Thomas Sheehy, published one of the first studies of the treatment of sprue with antibiotics and other alternatives. In 1960 when the District Hospital of Bayamón moved to the Hospital Ruiz Soler, where Puerto Rico Medical Center would be established, Doctor Pérez Santiago was named director of Hematology of the hospital and of the medical school. With it came his closest collaborators, Mistress
Jean Fradera, Director of the laboratory and researcher, and Mistress
Mary López, his Secretary. In 1960 he was elected President of the Medical Association of Puerto Rico.
In 1967, Governor Rafael Hernández Colón named him director of planning of the Department of health. In 1968, he invited the American Society of Hematology to hold its 1970 Convention in Puerto Rico.
lieutenant was a great success with over 3000 attendees, typical festivals in Casa de España and the Dupont Plaza Hotel and a concert in the theater of the University led by Pablo Casals.
After this Convention, he founded the Puerto Rican Society of Hematology in 1971. In 1973, he became Assistant Secretary of Health. Then he was medical director of the Cancer Center, project which was unsuccessful.
From 1976 to 1978 he was the Dean of the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus.
There he recruited Doctor Lillian Haddock as associated Dean and Doctor Pedro Rossello for the Department of surgery and medicine. He also expanded educational consortia.
Later, Doctor Pérez Santiago returned to his private practice. But his public service was not over: Governor Hernández Colon returned to recruit as director of the Office of Quality Public Service.
This was the basis for the founding of the Office of Government Ethics of Puerto Rico.
