Search

This article focuses on Brazil and Peru, the Latin American epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic during 2020 and 2021. The pandemic magnified the legacy of years of neoliberal policies, corruption and racism in these countries, the limitations of their poverty-reduction programs, the fragility of their democratic systems, and the insufficient political regard for public health and basic sanitation. I rely on the concepts of negligence and necropolitics. The first refers to the abdication of authorities in providing sufficient basic services to its citizens. The second — coined by Achille Mbembe before the pandemic — is used to explain the banalization by governments of preventable deaths of discriminated social groups. On a global level, the problematic access to medical equipment and vaccines was a failure because of the hoarding of vaccines by rich nations and the blaming of developing countries for their high mortality. The result was that national and international governmental reactions to COVID-19 worsened health asymmetries within countries and between the Global North and South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergence of a synergy that allowed the early development of what was once considered the best anti-AIDS program in the developing world. Initial responses to AIDS in Brazil during the 1980s and early 1990s were marked by a confrontation between activists concerned with human rights, and a government focusing on biomedical management of the epidemic. After 1992, activists, medical researchers, government officials, international donors like the Ford Foundation, health officers, and multilateral agencies like the World Bank were galvanized to cooperate. This was a complex process of braiding knowledge and practices related to activism, science, public health, governance and philanthropy in which each constituency maintained its independence. The result was a complex, holistic, and nuanced AIDS program. The process helped bridge the gap between knowledge and advocacy, generated public awareness, and was instrumental to reducing AIDS mortality developing local human resources and comprehensive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the efforts of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation (IHDRF) in its project initiative that resulted in the extermination of the African mosquito Anopheles gambiae from Brazil in 1940. This species, which originated in Dakar, Senegal, was identified in the Brazilian city of Natal in 1930, where insufficient local emergency sanitation actions enabled it to spread into the interior of the Brazilian northeast, causing an unprecedented malaria epidemic in the Americas in 1938, after years of silent spread. We will analyse the formation of Brazil's Malaria Service of the Northeast (MSNE), discussing its political and scientific controversies and how the transition from the idea of extermination to the idea of eradication was consolidated in the political process of creating this successful sanitation campaign. In addition, we will discuss how the integration and transnational development of medical entomology at the time was a fundamental factor in the cooperation and challenges among scientists involved in this campaign. The international cooperation of scientists, albeit oriented towards the project of eradication of this mosquito, organised different research agendas and gained new insights into the global dissemination of mosquito-borne diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the decline of the AIDS Programme in Brazil, the Latin American country most affected by the epidemic, with emphasis in the second decade of the twenty-first century. For many years, Brazil served as a model in Global Health due to a comprehensive preventive policy, a partnership between the government and health activists and the support of life-saving drugs as public goods rather than commodities. The regression of AIDS policies in Brazil interacted with developments in the United States as well as with multilateral agencies like UNAIDS that emphasised biomedicalisation in the response to the disease where broad human-rights programmes and alliance with activists were not priorities. International programmes like the 'Ending AIDS' campaign indirectly undermined the exceptional status AIDS enjoyed since the late 1980s. The backlash in Brazilian policies to fight AIDS was a result of the fragmentation of the left and the empowerment of radical conservative authoritarian and religious forces. The result was the breakdown of the long-held belief that successful anti-AIDS disease programmes could simultaneously help control the disease and build better healthcare systems and ultimately prompted the end of the special place AIDS' policy had in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how the Peruvian doctors Carlos Enrique Paz Soldán and Juan B. Lastres were intermediaries in the circulation, transfer and adaptation of the knowledge produced by historians of medicine from Perú, through the United States and Europe. These efforts were part of the conviction that medical humanism would train physicians with empathy for their patients and that past Peruvian medical practices had to be part of universal history. This allowed Peruvians to participate, at least for some time, in the medical history international network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goals of this article are to describe the emergence of the term "Global Health" and to summarize the historical debates around this notion. According to some experts, "Global Health" acquired a prominent role in international health agencies since the late twentieth century. However, some historians doubted of the usefulness of the notion highlighting its relationship with discourses that glorified the neoliberal economic globalization. At the same time, this work analyzes the possibilities for historians of health to use a new paradigm that has recently emerged among health workers and environmentalists known as "Planetary Health". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the history of Mexican physiology during the period 1910-60 when two noted investigators, José J. Izquierdo, first, and Arturo Rosenblueth, second, inscribed their work into an international network of medical research. The network had at its center the laboratory of Walter B. Cannon at Harvard University. The Rockefeller Foundation was its main supporter. Rosenblueth was quite familiar with the network because he worked with Cannon at Harvard for over ten years before returning to Mexico in the early 1940s. Izquierdo and Rosenblueth developed different strategies to face adverse conditions such as insufficient laboratory equipment, inadequate library resources, a small scientific community, and ephemeral political support. Both acquired local influence and international prestige, but the sources of financial and academic power remained in the United States. This case study provides insight into the circulation of scientific ideas and practices in an important Latin American country and suggests that the world's circulation of science among industrial and developing nations during the mid-twentieth century was intrinsically asymmetric but opened temporary opportunities for talented individuals and group of researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fight to achieve global eradication of poliomyelitis continues. Although native transmission of poliovirus was halted in the Western Hemisphere by the early 1990s, and only a few cases have been imported in the past few years, much of Latin America’s story remains to be told. Peru conducted a successful flexible, or flattened, vertical campaign in 1991. The initial disease-oriented programs began to collaborate with community-oriented primary health care systems, thus strengthening public–private partnerships and enabling the common goal of poliomyelitis eradication to prevail despite rampant terrorism, economic instability, and political turmoil. Committed leaders in Peru’s Ministry of Health, the Pan American Health Organization, and Rotary International, as well as dedicated health workers who acted with missionary zeal, facilitated acquisition of adequate technologies, coordinated work at the local level, and increased community engagement, despite sometimes being unable to institutionalize public health improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An obituary for historian Alfonso W. Quiroz Norris is presented.

The article presents visual evidence and supporting text for some of the World Health Organization's (WHO) most notable achievements in the last 60 years. Among others, the achievements include the creation of a global network for the facilitated communication of epidemiological information, the impressive campaign to reduce malaria worldwide and the successful promotion of both comprehensive and selective primary health care. These achievements over the course of its first 60 years have established WHO's unquestioned importance as the preeminent international health agency and augur well for the future.

The objective of this review paper is to show a historic overview for the development of population policies in Peru, specially focusing in the role of Peruvian physicians and public health specialists and foreign agencies during the past forty years. The main argument is that these policies have not been sustained -- mainly because of political reasons -- which led national participating institutions to have a weak role, to have poor negotiating capabilities with international donors and to a constant return to topics that may have been solved in the past. Lack of understanding and lack of willing for getting over all inconsistencies within this historical pattern partly explains all the difficulty for maintaining population policies as a priority in the national agenda. This is a historical review based in looking at documents and press articles, as well as performing deep interviews with some actors of population policies in this country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "global health" is rapidly replacing the older terminology of "international health." We describe the role of the Word Health Organization (WHO) in both international and global health and in the transition from one to the other. We suggest that the term "global health" emerged as part of larger political and historical processes, in which WHO found its dominant role challenged and began to reposition itself within a shifting set of power alliances. Between 1948 and 1998, WHO moved from being the unquestioned leader of international health to being an organization in crisis, facing budget shortfalls and diminished status, especially given the growing influence of new and powerful players. We argue that WHO began to refashion itself as the coordinator, strategic planner, and leader of global health initiatives as a strategy of survival in response to this transformed international political context (Am J Public Health. 2006;96: 62-72.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical developments in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century have received little attention. This study examines the Mexican responses to the success and failures of an important international health campaign of the 1950S: malaria eradication. During the 1950S malaria became the disease of central concern for international and US agencies working in developing countries (as yellow fever and hookworm were for tropical health during the early twentieth century). This article outlines the motivations, design and techniques of the campaign. It concentrates on two local responses: first, the enthusiastic support displayed by personnel working in the field; and, secondly, the reactions against the campaign of a local doctor - who revealed some of the inadequacies of malaria eradication - and of two medical anthropologists, who emphasised the scant attention paid to the cultural and social aspects of the campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I present a historical study of the role played by the World Health Organization and UNICEF in the emergence and diffusion of the concept of primary health care during the late 1970s and early 1980s. I have analyzed these organizations' political context, their leaders, the methodologies and technologies associated with the primary health care perspective, and the debates on the meaning of primary health care. These debates led to the development of an alternative, more restricted approach, known as selective primary health care. My study examined library and archival sources; I cite examples from Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the turn of the 20th century medical geography in Peru concentrated in the study of a native disease (bartoneiosis, also known as Carrion's disease and Verruga Peruana) and reinforced the relationship between the country's `natural' regions (coast, highlands and Amazon) and different patterns of disease. Expert knowledge on these themes was portrayed as important not only for the practice of medicine but also for the development of the country. This knowledge was instrumental for an emergent local medical tradition and for legitimizing the authority, power and prestige of Lima's medical elite. The city was the capital of a country whose population was mainly Indian and rural, and , lived in the highlands. This article studies the development of medical geography in Peru emphasizing the role played by Ernesto Odriozola, an influential clinician from Lima trained in Paris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides an overview of Latin American science. State of scientific knowledge before the European conquest in the 16th century; Assimilation of Western science; Description of the scientific revolution and cultural renewal; Impact of nationalistic concerns on science.

Explores the role played by American philanthropy in Latin American medical research. Models of Latin American scientific development; Factors that deterred the emergence of scientific excellence in Latin America; Research problems; Effect of nationalistic concerns on the content of science.

Studies the style of physiological research that emerged in response to adverse condition in Argentina. Nobel laureate Beranardo A. Houssay; Creation of distinctive laboratory style in Argentine physiology institutes; Accomplishments of Argentine physiologists; Relationship with the Rockfeller Foundation; Conflict between Instituto de Biologia y Medicina Experimental (IBME) and the military regime of Juan D. Peron.

This article focuses on the Rockefeller Foundation's Medical Policy and Scientific Research in Latin America. Some studies have challenged the role played by philanthropic agencies in the organization of scientific work in underdeveloped societies. The paper, presented in this article, is intended to add to this literature by studying the relationships developed between the Rockefeller Foundation and physiological research in four Latin American countries. The latter received sizeable grants during the 1940s and 1950s, not only as a result of the degree of excellence achieved in some laboratories of the region, but also as a means of spreading an academic model inspired by the elite medical schools of the U.S. Rockefellers philanthropy failed to modernize Latin American research structures, mainly because of the difficulty of transferring a model of scientific work from one culture to another. The paper shows how local resistance and conflict, rather than imitation and passivity, characterized this process of attempted transfer.

This article reports that the primary health care is the latest expression of a belief that can be traced to the 19th-century pathologist Rudolf Virchow. The solution to major human disease problems resides not only in the best science available but also in brave political proposals for social justice and the improvement of the life of the poor. From this perspective, health is not only a by-product of social changes but an instrument to promote such changes and health workers are in the vanguard.

The article announces that graduate student Rachel N. Mason Dentinger has received the 2009 Nathan Reingold Prize.

Presents a reply by Marcus Cueto to a letter to the editor about his article "The Origins of Primary Health Care and Selective Primary Health Care," in the 2004 issue of the "American Journal of Public Health."

The section discusses topics related to public health in Central America. In Latin America, there has long been a running debate over the relative effectiveness of vertical rather than horizontal programs in public health. The Pan America Sanitary Bureau and the ministers of health of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama first decided to create the Institute of Nutrition in 1946 and then formally inaugurated it in September 1949. The institute conducted pioneering clinical and epidemiological studies and interventions aimed at identifying and correcting dietary deficiencies in Central America, and it developed some of the first studies on the chemical composition of foods used by the population. Human capital in Chile, which is the fundamental base of a nation's economic prosperity, has been discounted and the people have been left to fend for themselves. Past governments in Chile considered investments in national health to be postponable expenditures, of secondary importance. Economic integration via the North American Free Trade Agreement did not void legislation that impedes integration of public health programs, nor did it facilitate the creation of legal instruments to ease the design and implementation of binational border programs in Mexico.

Fundamental details concerning the interaction between H2 and CH3-Si(111) have been elucidated by the combination of diffractive scattering experiments and electronic structure and scattering calculations. Rotationally inelastic diffraction (RID) of H2 and D2 from this model hydrocarbon-decorated semiconductor interface has been confirmed for the first time via both time-of-flight and diffraction measurements, with modest j = 0 → 2 RID intensities for H2 compared to the strong RID features observed for D2 over a large range of kinematic scattering conditions along two high-symmetry azimuthal directions. The Debye-Waller model was applied to the thermal attenuation of diffraction peaks, allowing for precise determination of the RID probabilities by accounting for incoherent motion of the CH3-Si(111) surface atoms. The probabilities of rotationally inelastic diffraction of H2 and D2 have been quantitatively evaluated as a function of beam energy and scattering angle, and have been compared with complementary electronic structure and scattering calculations to provide insight into the interaction potential between H2 (D2) and hence the surface charge density distribution. Specifically, a six-dimensional potential energy surface (PES), describing the electronic structure of the H2(D2)/CH3-Si(111) system, has been computed based on interpolation of density functional theory energies. Quantum and classical dynamics simulations have allowed for an assessment of the accuracy of the PES, and subsequently for identification of the features of the PES that serve as classical turning points. A close scrutiny of the PES reveals the highly anisotropic character of the interaction potential at these turning points. This combination of experiment and theory provides new and important details about the interaction of H2 with a hybrid organic-semiconductor interface, which can be used to further investigate energy flow in technologically relevant systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]