Isaura Borges Coelho

Isaura Borges Coelho (1926 - 2019), was a Portuguese nurse and activist. She is known for her efforts in favour of nurses' rights, for which she was imprisoned and tortured by the Portuguese dictatorship's political police.

Early years and training Isaura Assunção da Silva Borges Coelho was born in the city of Portimão in the Faro District of Portugal on 20 June 1926. She demonstrated her ability to help others at an early age having, at the age of eleven, saved a girl from drowning in the sea. When she was 16, she avoided a railway accident when she alerted a train to brake, because an animal-drawn vehicle had become stuck at a level crossing. She was then subjected to a lawsuit for delaying the train. After completing school, she studied at a Nursing School, between 1949 and 1952.

Professional career and activism Coelho began work in 1952, at the Hospital de Santo António dos Capuchos in Lisbon. There, she witnessed poor working conditions that included thirty mandatory night shifts that were supposed to last only twelve hours but often lasted 24. Nurses working under such conditions often had only one day off per week. She was tortured, and was beaten and dragged by the hair in front of her lawyer, who was also violently attacked. When she left, she was in very poor health, weighing only 30 kilograms, having already been hospitalized during her incarceration. After leaving prison, she stayed in hospital for some months. She had previously had a friendship with António Borges Coelho, a historian also opposed to the government, who had been imprisoned for six years for being a member of the Youth MUD and the Portuguese Communist Party. She then returned to Portimão, where she lived for about a year with her parents, still being watched by the political police.

Coelho died on 11 June 2019, in the parish of Parede. She and António Borges Coelho had one daughter.