The League of Nations Health Organization

The League of Nations Health Organization (LNHO) was a technical organization of the League of Nations (1920–1946), and it was taken over by the World Health Organization (WHO) after World War II. Its executive body was the Health Committee (HC), one of the League’s permanent advisory committees. The HC was composed of medical and public health experts and advised the League’s Council on health-related matters, and it made decisions on international health operations. The Health Section (HS), a part of the League’s Secretariat, was the administrative body of the LNHO. Provisionally founded in 1921 and formally established in 1923, the LNHO was led by the HS’s medical director, Ludwik Rajchman (b. 1881–d. 1965), a Polish medical doctor and bacteriologist, from 1921 to 1939. It aimed for a better world by improving the health of people around the globe, and it carried out a broad range of work with a relatively small budget, which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) and the League’s member states. Its work included epidemiological intelligence, compilation of public health statistics, standardization of biomedical substances, expert exchange programs, assistance to national public health administrations, and research on diseases. In the 1930s it conducted social medicine projects, including nutrition, housing, rural hygiene, and health insurance. Mobilizing experts in these broad fields, the LNHO enhanced the circulation of ideas among experts and networks across the regions. Its operations have been recognized as one of the most successful among the League’s work. The LNHO was, however, often frustrated by the parallel existence of the two other interstate health organizations, the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB) at Washington, DC, founded in 1902, and the Office International d’Hygiène Publique at Paris (OIHP), founded in 1907. The HC co-opted the members of the OIHP’s executive committee, but this led to constant tension within the HC and between the LNHO and the OIHP. Furthermore, while an expert from the United States—a non-League member but a OIHP member—joined the HC, the PASB at times opposed the LNHO’s intervention in the Americas. The WHO, established in 1948, was set up therefore as the single global health organization, taking over from the LNHO and the OIHP, and the PASB became one of its regional offices in 1949. Although the LNHO has been criticized as Eurocentric, it had a vision for “world health.” It worked with the United States, Germany, and the USSR. Its projects also encompassed colonial Asia and Africa, leaving significant legacies for health projects undertaken by the WHO and other UN agencies on behalf of the Global South.