Arturo Jirón

Arturo Humberto Jirón Vargas (6 December 1928 – Santiago, 30 October 2014) was a Chilean surgeon, academic and politician. He served as Minister of Public Health during the government of President Salvador Allende between November 1972 and August 1973, and survived the 1973 Chilean coup d'état at La Moneda Palace.

Family and education Jirón was the son of Gustavo Jirón Latapiat—personal physician to President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, academic and Radical Party senator for Santiago—and Emma Vargas. He studied at the Instituto Nacional and then at the University of Chile Faculty of Medicine, graduating as a surgeon in 1952 with the thesis “Contribución al estudio de la anatomía normal del pulmón en el recién nacido y en el adulto.”

He married María Angélica Silva Morales, with whom he had three children: Ricardo Antonio, Arturo and Patricia. He later spent time under house arrest until January 1975, when he went into exile in Caracas, Venezuela, where he worked at the Central University of Venezuela.

Jirón died on 30 October 2014, aged 85, at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santiago.