Международное сотрудничество в области здравоохранения между Первой и Второй мировыми войнами – уроки истории в борьбе с эпидемиями

Since the middle of the 19th century, a period of real progress in the field of public health began, government obligations towards health expanded; quarantine, isolation and other measures were introduced by the international community aimed to ensure in the first place safe trade, but also the health of the population of large Western European cities. The article examines the three new international structures in the field of health created before and after the First World War. The first in time was the Office international d’hygiène publique (OIHP), created in 1907. Shortly before the war in 1913, the International Department of Health (IHD) of the Rockefeller Foundation was founded in the United States, and straight after the war in 1920, the League of Nations Health Organization (LNHO) appeared. Despite the cooperation at certain points, the relationship between the LNHO and the OIHP was largely marked by rivalry and the reluctance of the OIHP to become part of the League of Nations. In 1920 the Epidemic Commission was founded and its first head became a well known Polish medical scientist Ludwik Rajchman. The authors also pay attention to the first epidemiological actions in Bulgaria, made possible by the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation in South-Eastern Europe.