11 - The cycles of eradication: the Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American public health, 1918–1940

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.