Technical assistance and socialist international health: Hungary, the WHO and the Korean War

Abstract

From the establishment of the World Health Organization in 1948, the question of technical assistance was hotly debated by Eastern European countries. Recuperating from the war and undergoing radical political change, they were both recipients and donors of technical assistance in a newly forming system of international health. These countries had specific ideas about the obligations of states and the role of technical aid that did not necessarily map on the dominant, US-led interpretation. While there is a growing literature on technical assistance between Eastern Europe and the so-called Third World, the role of technology and expertise at the intersection of liberal and socialist international health has been little explored. Through the case of hospital-building projects and expert networks from a Hungarian perspective, this paper asks how we can understand socialist engagement in international health, and how technical assistance among the Second and Third worlds fitted into broader systems.