A salute to the Pan American Health Organization

the Pan American Health Organization, the oldest of the international health agencies, cele- brates its seventy-fifth anniversary. Limited at the outset in scope and activities, and correspondingly restricted in growth during the first part of this century, PAHO has had impressive expansion in importance and influence in the past three decades. Indeed, worldwide, as well as in the Western Hemisphere, the international health organizations, of all the specialized agencies under the umbrella of the United Na- tions or the Organization of American States, have shown the steadiest progress. Many observers, with considerable justification, attribute this as much to innate human desire for general understanding and mutuality of interest as to spe- cific progress in health. It seems self-evident that inter- national collaboration, so often frustrated in the political are- na, is peculiarly suited to the universality implicit in a health agency. And one must remember that interaction of health and international trade constituted a key factor in the birth, at the tum of this century, of what was to become the Pan American Health Organization

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• Years of the Pan American Health Organization

  Elizabeth Fee, Terry M Brown et al.•American Journal of Public Health•2002

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• Seventy-five years of international health

  A Yankauer•American Journal of Public Health•1977

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