Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: constructing international health between the wars
- 2 ‘Custodians of the sacred fire’: the ICRC and the postwar reorganisation of the International Red Cross
- 3 Red Cross organisational politics, 1918–1922: relations of dominance and the influence of the United States
- 4 The League of Nations Health Organisation
- 5 Assistance and not mere relief: the Epidemic Commission of the League of Nations, 1920–1923
- 6 Wireless wars in the eastern arena: epidemiological surveillance, disease prevention and the work of the Eastern Bureau of the League of Nations Health Organisation, 1925–1942
- 7 Social medicine at the League of Nations Health Organisation and the International Labour Office compared
- 8 The Social Section and Advisory Committee on Social Questions of the League of Nations
- 9 ‘Uncramping child life’: international children's organisations, 1914–1939
- 10 The International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation: the Russell years, 1920–1934
- 11 The cycles of eradication: the Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American public health, 1918–1940
- 12 The Pasteur Institutes between the two world wars. The transformation of the international sanitary order
- 13 Internationalising nursing education during the interwar period
- 14 Mental hygiene as an international movement
- 15 Mobilising social knowledge for social welfare: intermediary institutions in the political systems of the United States and Great Britain between the First and Second World Wars
- Index
- Cambridge History of Medicine
11 - The cycles of eradication: the Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American public health, 1918–1940
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: constructing international health between the wars
- 2 ‘Custodians of the sacred fire’: the ICRC and the postwar reorganisation of the International Red Cross
- 3 Red Cross organisational politics, 1918–1922: relations of dominance and the influence of the United States
- 4 The League of Nations Health Organisation
- 5 Assistance and not mere relief: the Epidemic Commission of the League of Nations, 1920–1923
- 6 Wireless wars in the eastern arena: epidemiological surveillance, disease prevention and the work of the Eastern Bureau of the League of Nations Health Organisation, 1925–1942
- 7 Social medicine at the League of Nations Health Organisation and the International Labour Office compared
- 8 The Social Section and Advisory Committee on Social Questions of the League of Nations
- 9 ‘Uncramping child life’: international children's organisations, 1914–1939
- 10 The International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation: the Russell years, 1920–1934
- 11 The cycles of eradication: the Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American public health, 1918–1940
- 12 The Pasteur Institutes between the two world wars. The transformation of the international sanitary order
- 13 Internationalising nursing education during the interwar period
- 14 Mental hygiene as an international movement
- 15 Mobilising social knowledge for social welfare: intermediary institutions in the political systems of the United States and Great Britain between the First and Second World Wars
- Index
- Cambridge History of Medicine
Summary
Between 1918 and 1940 Latin America became a testing ground for one of the most ambitious and controversial concepts in modern public health: disease eradication. The eradication of infectious diseases in Latin America became a popular endeavour among many US public health authorities of the early twentieth century. This concern arose for a complex combination of technical and political reasons which included the success of local eradication efforts earlier in the century (e.g., those carried out in Havana and Panama at the turn of the century), the fear of Latin America infecting or reinfecting the US, and the perceived need to protect those areas of the world which the US considered under its economic influence.
Partially because of the absence during the 1920s and 1930s of an effective international framework through which Latin American countries could act on common health problems, the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) played an active role in the emergence and application of the eradication concept (the Pan American Sanitary Bureau, created in 1902, functioned until the early 1930s with a small staff and as a virtual branch of the US Public Health Service). The RF's eradication campaigns had several by-products such as the reorganisation of Latin American public health institutions, the expansion of public health services to rural areas, and the shift of the academic and technical centre of influence from France to the US.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- International Health Organisations and Movements, 1918–1939 , pp. 222 - 243Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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