No more surprising than a broken pitcher? Maternal and child health in the early years of the Pan American Sanitary Bureau.

Abstract

The priorities and activities of international health organizations have historically been determined at the metropolitan level or through a confluence of central and local interests. The case of maternal and child health and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau during the first half of the 20th century demonstrates a different phenomenon. Rather than sparking interest and actions in maternal and child health in Latin America, the PASB ignored this area even though the agency was repeatedly urged by numerous countries in the region over several decades to provide support. This article begins with an examination of the emergence of maternal and child health circa 1900 in Europe, North America, and Latin America, identifying political, demographic, ideological, economic, and cultural commonalities and differences in these regions. We then turn to the PASB's early history and modus operandi, the pressure exerted by Latin American countries upon the PASB to pay attention to maternal and child health, and the Bureau's unwillingness to work in this area. Next we explore concomitant developments in maternal and child health and eugenics within Latin America in the 1920s and 1930s and the PASB's first steps in this area. Finally we discuss the conflict over the PASB's role in maternal and child health on several dimensions: as a manifestation of differing cultural priorities in the U.S. and Latin America; as a question of struggle for organizational power within the PASB; and as part of a richer understanding of the diffusion of early 20th-century public health and medical practices.