ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

A decade of health détente. WHO influenza surveillance as a terrain of Cold War between the late 1960s and the late 1970s.

• In Event: Science Diplomacy: Cooperation, Competition and Crisis 2

English Abstract

The medical officers who founded the WHO believed that it should be a universalistic institution. The “functionalist” approach, according to which technical collaboration on health issues could overcome political issues, soon clashed with the emerging Cold War. The debate over WHO membership, marked by the exclusion of Franco’s Spain, resulted in membership being regulated by simple majority.
This was a unique situation within the UN agency system. Between the late 1960s and mid-1970s, it became the gateway to recognition for ‘divided’ countries (East Germany, North Korea, and later reunified Vietnam). The admission of the People’s Republic of China to the UN, as well as support from former colonies, paved the way for this process. Influenza surveillance provides an interesting lens through which to analyze it.
It had not encountered any impenetrable ‘Iron Curtains’ in its work. It is therefore useful to observe how the need for cooperation in controlling the pandemic danger of a virus with very high mutation and spread rates was used to promote international recognition, to ease tensions and to resolve crises.
In addition to the cases already mentioned, my paper will examine other paradigmatic events: Cuba’s integration into the WHO’s influenza surveillance in the early 1970s; virological cooperation between London and Moscow after counterespionage ‘Operation FOOT’ in 1971; studies on influenza within the framework of the US-USSR Health Cooperation Agreement.
I will explore the détente of those years by examining sources about influenza surveillance from the WHO, the British National Archives, and the Wellcome Collection.

Author

• Giacomo Simoncelli, Sapienza University of Rome