Revisiting Bandoeng

Despite the fact that the Bandoeng Conference on Rural Hygiene, organized by the League of Nations Health Organization (LNHO) in 1937, has been called a “milestone in health and development”, surprisingly little has been written about it. This neglect is seen by Iris Borowy, author of a history of the LNHO, to be consistent with how “the social medicine program in international health policies in the 1930s … has been forgotten by today’s heirs.” In her authoritative book on the LNHO, Borowy describes in some detail how this Conference came about, what factors determined its agenda and some of the tensions present due to the “profound ambiguity that existed on the questions of colonialism, of the role of Western medicine in Asia and, by extension, on the West as a model for the entire non-Western world.” More recently, Annick Guénel has added to our understanding of some of these tensions by examining more closely several of the country reports prepared in advance for the Conference. Bandoeng has been used by several authors to contrast the past with the present. Dr Halfdan Mahler, Director General of World Health Organization (WHO) (1973-1988), for example, noted the parallels between the outcomes of the Bandoeng Conference and WHO’s Primary Health Care (PHC) approach. Similarly, Socrates Litsios has used the malaria-related outcome of Bandoeng to draw attention to how it resembled the ‘new’ WHO malaria control strategy developed in the 1990s. Sunil Amrith, on the other hand, has teased out how Bandoeng’s outcomes helped shape India’s notions concerning public health during its late Colonial and Post-Colonial period

Kenneth Newell: Primary Health Care's Midwife

Newell is well known to advocates of social medicine owing to his havaing edited Health by the People and introducing primary health care (PHC) principles to the WHO governing bodies. This paper explores early career in New Zealand before; the Division of Research in Epidemiology and Communication Sciences before becoming Director of the Division of Strengthening of Health Serrvices which provided him with the springboard to promote PHC to the governing bodies of WHO

On the “hitherto untried process of giving doctors adequate training” in preventive medicine and public health

On the “hitherto untried process of giving doctors adequate training” in preventive medicine and public healt

Primary Health Care, WHO and the NGO Community

Non Governmental Organization (NGO) support proved critical in helping WHO launch the PHC approach in the mid 1970 s. Enthusiasm for PHC led to a number of WHO/NGO initiatives which showed early promise, but which were not strong enough to survive the onslaught of ‘selective PHC’. Socrates Litsios argues that PHC is too important an idea to let drop and that NGOs have a critical role to play in keeping the PHC spirit alive. He underlines that past experiences need to be carefully reviewed in order to learn how to do better in the future. More importantly, NGOs need to better understand how best to ‘use’ WHO. Development (2004) 47, 57–63. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100030