As it has been the case in North America and even more in Europe, basic animal and human research has preceded the development of sleep medicine in Latin America . In the 1960s, pioneering research in those fields was conducted by Raul Hernandez Peon (Neurophysiology) in Mexico and Jaime Monti (Pharmacology) in Uruguay. In the 1970s, Rene Drucker Colin (Neurophysiology) in Mexico, Daniel Cardinali (Neuroendocrinology) in Argentina, Sergio Tufik (Psychobiology) in Brazil, and Ricardo Velluti (Neurophysiology) in Uruguay conducted similar research. It was only in the 1980s that many individuals became interested in clinical sleep medicine, and after having training in sleep medicine either in North America or Europe, established sleep disorders centers initially in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia, later in Peru, with representatives from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, and Peru and later Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, and Paraguay [1,2] .

The major milestone in the development of clinical sleep medicine in Latin America was the foundation of the Federation of Latin American Sleep Societies (FLASS) in 1985. Many exchanges developed between those countries and North America and Europe (mainly Spain) with sleep specialists being invited to participate in FLASS meetings, national sleep societies meetings and sleep training courses, and Latin American sleep specialists presenting their work in the meetings of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS), the European Sleep Research Society (ESRS), the World Federation of Sleep Research Societies (WFSRS), and the World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM) . From the very beginning, the WASM has been promoting clinical sleep medicine in South America as part of its mission of spreading sleep health worldwide.

In fact, some key members of the FLASS served or are presently serving on the governing councils of the WASM (Sergio Tufik and Dalva Poyares from Brazil) and the World Sleep Day committee (Julia Santin from Chile) .

Since the foundation of FLASS and the WFSRS (Ennio Vivaldi from Chile), several Latin American countries established sleep societies (See Table 18.2) to promote research, patient care, and education in sleep medicine.

Except for Brazil, the rest of the Latin American countries do not have facilities for normal training, certification, or guideline assessing minimal competences to practice sleep medicine at present. The field is still young but there is intense interest in advancing the field in Latin America which bodes well for future development of sleep medicine .

Great strides have been made in promoting sleep medicine in India in the last two decades [3]. As in the USA and other parts of the world, sleep medicine is a multidisciplinary specialty, but the pulmonary physicians took the lead in developing and running sleep laboratories, however, neurologists, psychiatrists, otolaryngologists, and dentists had been increasingly interested in practicing sleep medicine. In absence of guidelines with strict enforcement, sleep laboratories had been popping up in a variety of hospitals, nursing homes, and diagnostic centers to diagnose and treat sleep apnea with positive pressure therapy using continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) equipment. It is hoped that this situation will soon be rectified because the standardization and certification process in sleep medicine are underway. There are some 120 sleep laboratories across India (a trivial number in a country with more than a billion population) with over 20 in Delhi. Most of the sleep-related activities initially happened in New Delhi quickly followed by centers and laboratories in Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Kerala, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. The initial push for sleep medicine came from basic scientists led by Dr. V Mohan Kumar at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi with the founding of the Indian Society for Sleep Research (ISSR) in 1992. It is notable that as early as 1934, when sleep medicine was in its infancy, Dr. Dixshit had provided experimental evidence to show the existence of sleep center in the hypothalamus [4]. The clinicians did not wait too long to spread the mission of promoting clinical sleep medicine. In these efforts Dr. JC Suri, Head of the Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi where the first sleep laboratory of the country was established, took the lead in founding the Clinical Sleep Medicine Society, the Indian Sleep Disorders Association (ISDA) in 1995. Dr. Suri became the founding president. Since 1996, the ISDA has been organizing annual meetings and courses under the heading “Sleepcon” at various cities across the country, and inviting foreign dignitaries from USA, UK, Canada, Israel, China, Europe, Japan, and Australia, including the present writer (Sudhansu Chokroverty), Drs. Christian Guilleminault, Robert Thomas, Claudia Trenkwalder, Patrick Strollo, and Neal Douglas. The other significant activities of the ISDA include introduction of fellowships and conferring diploma in sleep medicine after successfully completing a certification examination, and initiation of a sleep technologists’ certification examination.