Last month, CGHH’s Deputy Director Dr Alexander Medcalf spoke on the WHO’s public information strategies at the ‘Photography and the Languages of Reconstruction after the Second World War’ conference at Cardiff University (www.cardiff.ac.uk/events/view/photography-and-the-languages-of-reconstruction-after-the-second-world-war,-1944-49). Drawing on his articles on the WHO in the Journal of Global History and Medical History, Dr Medcalf gives us a brief introduction to how the WHO used photographs as part of its public information activities.
"The WHO created a public information office (PIO) to address the section of its Constitution which specified that education and information for the public was necessary for the WHO to achieve its goals. For health measures to have lasting value, people of all ages needed to be persuaded to take an interest and responsibility for solving their health problems and those affecting their community. However, the WHO recognised that in order for this to be effective it needed to find ways to balance information that was timely, accurate and informative, but also interesting and engaging.
The WHO developed an array of means of inciting interest in the agency and the health situation around the world: exhibitions, publications and films. But photographs were especially useful and helped to construct a pervasive vision about what it meant to be healthy or suffer disease. The WHO disseminated photographic work through its own public-oriented magazine, the WHO Newsletter. Photos took pride of place in Newsletter, on the front cover and features inside. Through it the WHO sought to reach out to as many people as possible and encourage them to see the world ‘through the eyes of the WHO’.
Initially photographs were contributed by WHO staff working in the field, but these were deemed to lack professional quality. In May 1950 a visual media expert was assigned to arrange photographic missions on the WHO’s worldwide activities and the agency came to rely on well-regarded photographic agencies such as Magnum, and eminent photojournalists who were seen to provide better, hard-hitting and captivating imagery. That said, the appearance of individual photographs was the result of input from many individuals. Once each photo mission was authorized, photographers were supplied with background information on the countries and the topics in question. Sometimes we see very specific instructions and lists of preferred shots and topics provided to photographers. When the photographic material was returned to the WHO, PIO officials selected the shots for publication. This process wasn’t simply about gathering evidence or being an eyewitness, but about constructing a particular narratives.
We can conclude that the WHO's efforts to construct and disseminate visual messages were successful. Newsletter had a good reach, appearing the in tens of thousands and in multiple languages. Articles and photographs printed in Newsletter were made freely available for reproduction enabling the WHO to feature in many external publications. A report on public information projects undertaken between November 1953 and June 1954 recorded that several popular magazines had devoted long stories to the WHO. Regional offices worked to inspire international coverage by arranging for material to be placed in local picture magazines. But judging the effect of public information work on the intended audience was harder. The records do not suggest that a comprehensive answer was ever obtained. It remained difficult to estimate the size of the audience reached by WHO information, and even harder to assess the extent to which public attitudes were changed.
Thus the WHO was able to put its work and vision in front of millions. But that was not the end of the story. In the 1970s the WHO began to look more closely at the effects of this imagery and, as Joao Nunes and I explore in our article 'Visualising Primary Health Care: World Health Organization Representations of Community Health Workers' , there were many challenges in picturing certain topics."
Further reading:
Alexander Medcalf, ‘Between Art and Information: Communicating World Health, 1948-1970’, Journal of Global History 13, 1 (2018), 94-120.
Alexander Medcalf and Joao Nunes, 'Visualising primary health care: World Health Organization representations of community health workers, 1970-1989’, Medical History 62, 4 (2018), 401-24.
Thursday 23 May 2019
Tuesday 19 March 2019
Reflections on a year at CGHH
Today we are delighted to feature another guest post from Namrata Ravichandra Ganneri (a Commonwealth-Rutherford Fellow based at the Centre for Global Health Histories (CGHH) and the Department of History for 23 months (22 March 2018 to 21 February 2020)), reflecting on her first year spent researching at CGHH!
Having spent nearly a year in the UK as a Commonwealth-Rutherford Fellow on the project ‘India’s Smallpox Eradication as a Global Roadmap’ at CGHH, a trip home was to be a welcome break from all duties. Or so I hoped! –a chance visit to my employers brought a novel assignment- a talk on my fellowship experience for peers and students. The talk comprised my thoughts on the transformatory impact of the fellowship, which commenced in late March 2018 on my life and career. Now that I am back from annual leave and ease myself into a routine, I believe that sharing these thoughts may also profit both the followers of this blog and the wider online communities accessing this post. What follows is a brief account of the presentation, and my reflections since.
My annual leave to India early February 2019 was to revisit the smells and sounds of my home country, meet family and friends, plus afforded a much -needed break from the cold British winter! Indeed, most of my time was spent catching up with family, yet I yearned to see my workplace having spent nearly one third of my life teaching at S.N.D.T. College in Mumbai. A visit to the college brought joyful reunions with colleagues and students, although meeting the new head of the institution also brought in a new assignment - a short talk on my fellowship experience so far!
There were mixed feelings as I ascended the podium to deliver a talk on ‘My fellowship in the UK: some thoughts and learnings’ on 25 February 2019. It was the same place where I had greeted and introduced several visiting scholars and guests to our institution in the past and was then trying to distil a year of somewhat heady experience of my life in the UK. Living alone in a foreign country was an important first though 2018 had been eventful in myriad ways.
I spoke to my young friends in college about the beautiful student- friendly, as well as touristy, city of York, as well as my experience of living through ‘Brexit Britain’. There was considerable interest in the Commonwealth scholarship scheme as I shared information about the masters’ and doctoral scholarships awarded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, and my own insights as a recipient of the postdoctoral Commonwealth- Rutherford Fellowship (which isfunded by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) through the Rutherford Fund).
I was fortunate enough to avail this research only fellowship, awarded for a maximum of twenty- three months, for the whole period , due to grant of study leave by my Indian employer. The Commonwealth fellowship enables my training at CGHH, a globally renowned centre on medical history which works closely with the World Health Organization (WHO) being a long standing WHO Collaborating Centre at the Department of History, University of York. Extraordinary support from my host institution and supervisor eased transitioning into the relatively new sub-discipline of history of medicine and health policy. Moreover, the Centre has attracted research scholars from several nationalities with whom I have developed both camaraderie and collegiality despite only a relatively short period of association. The excellent opportunities to interact and liaise with academics, policy makers and health advocates from all corners of the globe, from China to New Zealand to Finland as they passed through the Centre helped internationalise my own research. I spoke about the exhilaration of devoting all my time to reading and writing (away from teaching!) and realizing a long-standing dream of visiting the British Library in London. As I saw it, the chance to develop expertise in a different research area, working with newer material and archives was adding to my métier. Additionally enriching were the enormous opportunities to participate in University level events. An important high was the invitation to deliberate on gender and social justice as a member of the Equality and Diversity Committee (EDC) newly constituted by the department of History in 2018.
I was especially pleased recounting the experience of representing my country as well as my host institution at the World Health Organization (WHO) ‘Global Conference on Primary Health Care’ in Astana, Kazakhstan in October 2018, commemorating 40 years of the Alma-Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care. The trip created special memories especially as I met greats like Prof. Sharmanov, the architect of the Alma-Ata Declaration and observed closely the crafting of a global health agenda. Additionally, the visit to Astana offered me the opportunity to co-organise and present my ongoing research on India’s smallpox eradication programme at a prestigious WHO Global Health Histories Seminar on 'Immunization for Universal Health Coverage' at Nazarbayev University and address a wide audience including delegates present in the young city to attend the historic conference.
Being based in CGHH has meant representing the Centre in key meetings and at Global Health Histories seminars in various parts of the world, participating in wide-ranging discussions on global health across geographical regions as well as disciplines-public health, medical practice, medical anthropology, visual anthropology, public policy etc and opportunities to both innovate and invigorate my own research skills. As questions poured in both from peers and students about life in the UK and the higher education and research environment abroad, I marvelled at my own felicity- commenting and reflecting- and finally, looking forward to another, nearly a year, in the UK.
My annual leave to India early February 2019 was to revisit the smells and sounds of my home country, meet family and friends, plus afforded a much -needed break from the cold British winter! Indeed, most of my time was spent catching up with family, yet I yearned to see my workplace having spent nearly one third of my life teaching at S.N.D.T. College in Mumbai. A visit to the college brought joyful reunions with colleagues and students, although meeting the new head of the institution also brought in a new assignment - a short talk on my fellowship experience so far!
There were mixed feelings as I ascended the podium to deliver a talk on ‘My fellowship in the UK: some thoughts and learnings’ on 25 February 2019. It was the same place where I had greeted and introduced several visiting scholars and guests to our institution in the past and was then trying to distil a year of somewhat heady experience of my life in the UK. Living alone in a foreign country was an important first though 2018 had been eventful in myriad ways.
I spoke to my young friends in college about the beautiful student- friendly, as well as touristy, city of York, as well as my experience of living through ‘Brexit Britain’. There was considerable interest in the Commonwealth scholarship scheme as I shared information about the masters’ and doctoral scholarships awarded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, and my own insights as a recipient of the postdoctoral Commonwealth- Rutherford Fellowship (which isfunded by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) through the Rutherford Fund).
I was fortunate enough to avail this research only fellowship, awarded for a maximum of twenty- three months, for the whole period , due to grant of study leave by my Indian employer. The Commonwealth fellowship enables my training at CGHH, a globally renowned centre on medical history which works closely with the World Health Organization (WHO) being a long standing WHO Collaborating Centre at the Department of History, University of York. Extraordinary support from my host institution and supervisor eased transitioning into the relatively new sub-discipline of history of medicine and health policy. Moreover, the Centre has attracted research scholars from several nationalities with whom I have developed both camaraderie and collegiality despite only a relatively short period of association. The excellent opportunities to interact and liaise with academics, policy makers and health advocates from all corners of the globe, from China to New Zealand to Finland as they passed through the Centre helped internationalise my own research. I spoke about the exhilaration of devoting all my time to reading and writing (away from teaching!) and realizing a long-standing dream of visiting the British Library in London. As I saw it, the chance to develop expertise in a different research area, working with newer material and archives was adding to my métier. Additionally enriching were the enormous opportunities to participate in University level events. An important high was the invitation to deliberate on gender and social justice as a member of the Equality and Diversity Committee (EDC) newly constituted by the department of History in 2018.
I was especially pleased recounting the experience of representing my country as well as my host institution at the World Health Organization (WHO) ‘Global Conference on Primary Health Care’ in Astana, Kazakhstan in October 2018, commemorating 40 years of the Alma-Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care. The trip created special memories especially as I met greats like Prof. Sharmanov, the architect of the Alma-Ata Declaration and observed closely the crafting of a global health agenda. Additionally, the visit to Astana offered me the opportunity to co-organise and present my ongoing research on India’s smallpox eradication programme at a prestigious WHO Global Health Histories Seminar on 'Immunization for Universal Health Coverage' at Nazarbayev University and address a wide audience including delegates present in the young city to attend the historic conference.
Being based in CGHH has meant representing the Centre in key meetings and at Global Health Histories seminars in various parts of the world, participating in wide-ranging discussions on global health across geographical regions as well as disciplines-public health, medical practice, medical anthropology, visual anthropology, public policy etc and opportunities to both innovate and invigorate my own research skills. As questions poured in both from peers and students about life in the UK and the higher education and research environment abroad, I marvelled at my own felicity- commenting and reflecting- and finally, looking forward to another, nearly a year, in the UK.
Friday 4 January 2019
Procession and Pageantry in a disease eradication programme: A note on India’s ‘Smallpox Eradication Week’
Today we are delighted to feature a guest post from Namrata Ravichandra Ganneri (a Commonwealth-Rutherford Fellow based at the Centre for Global Health Histories (CGHH) and the Department of History for 23 months (22 March 2018 to 21 February 2020)). Her project, entitled ‘India’s Smallpox Eradication Programme as a Global Roadmap’, closely examines pilot programmes conducted in the Indian state of Goa to offer a fuller picture of the global history and narrative of smallpox eradication.
In the last quarter of 1962, India launched an ambitious National Smallpox Eradication Programme, following an epidemic cycle in 1958. At this stage, the primary strategy adopted was that of mass vaccination and the programme aimed to vaccinate the entire population of the country by March 1966.
There were obvious technical and administrative hurdles in vaccinating each and every individual in a vast and populous country like India, which contributed nearly half the number of smallpox cases in the world at that time. Another stumbling block was the general resistance and apathy towards vaccination among the populace. The success of this gigantic public health programme hinged on active and voluntary participation by the people. And, this was certainly difficult to count on in the mid-1960s.
Hence a ‘Smallpox Eradication Week’, a flurry of events to popularise the government campaign, was launched in the last week of September every year, though not much is known about the event in its early years. A ‘Smallpox Day’ was celebrated on 25 September 1962 just before the launch of the programme and since then there was a week of intensive publicity and canvassing for popularising the government programme beginning on the 25th September in the years 1963 and 1964.
Meanwhile, an evaluation conducted in the interim indicated that only 74 percent of the population was vaccinated, while a quarter of the population remained unvaccinated and therefore susceptible to the scourge. Health education was an important component of the eradication programme; its importance was never clearer to the authorities and the public health workers than in the face of falling targets.
Seemingly, the 1965 ‘Smallpox Eradication Week’ was specially mandated to shore up the programme’s vaccination targets, and these ‘celebrations’ are better known since they were reported in contemporary media. In fact, a special manual outlined all activities envisaged as part of the programme. All the federal states were mandated to participate and report their activities in the official mouth-piece of the programme The Smallpox Eradication News (English) and the Rashtriya Chechak Unmulan Samachar (Hindi).
A range of activities including lectures, debates, programmes on All India Radio (the public broadcaster) and cinema shows were organized throughout the country. However, interestingly, the dominant images that come to us today are those of public processions with men, women and even children carrying placards and raising slogans.
The tradition of prabhat pheris (an early morning procession with religious ballads) used during the freedom struggle in India to broadcast anti-colonial sentiments was reinscribed with smallpox eradication messages. Street theatre/ plays on the theme were performed in some parts of India. Importantly, these events were accompanied by mass vaccination drives.
The enduring images of the ‘Smallpox Eradication Week’, of people marching in procession, carrying banners etc. or performing at events, were perhaps meant to convey that the general masses welcomed the programme despite the evidence of obvious resistance in the large numbers of unvaccinated people towards the close of the first phase of the programme.[1]
This archive of images, relatively little known and under analysed, gesture towards the politics of popular representations of state managed schemes and programmes. Even as the eradication programme was faltering in achieving its targeted outcomes, the visuals remain celebratory and euphoric.
Pictures have usually been used to produce a narrative that conforms to what we already know. However if used ‘on their own terms’, as Pinney (2004:8) suggests, they might be able to narrate to us a different story about the Indian programme.
In the last quarter of 1962, India launched an ambitious National Smallpox Eradication Programme, following an epidemic cycle in 1958. At this stage, the primary strategy adopted was that of mass vaccination and the programme aimed to vaccinate the entire population of the country by March 1966.
There were obvious technical and administrative hurdles in vaccinating each and every individual in a vast and populous country like India, which contributed nearly half the number of smallpox cases in the world at that time. Another stumbling block was the general resistance and apathy towards vaccination among the populace. The success of this gigantic public health programme hinged on active and voluntary participation by the people. And, this was certainly difficult to count on in the mid-1960s.
Hence a ‘Smallpox Eradication Week’, a flurry of events to popularise the government campaign, was launched in the last week of September every year, though not much is known about the event in its early years. A ‘Smallpox Day’ was celebrated on 25 September 1962 just before the launch of the programme and since then there was a week of intensive publicity and canvassing for popularising the government programme beginning on the 25th September in the years 1963 and 1964.
Meanwhile, an evaluation conducted in the interim indicated that only 74 percent of the population was vaccinated, while a quarter of the population remained unvaccinated and therefore susceptible to the scourge. Health education was an important component of the eradication programme; its importance was never clearer to the authorities and the public health workers than in the face of falling targets.
Seemingly, the 1965 ‘Smallpox Eradication Week’ was specially mandated to shore up the programme’s vaccination targets, and these ‘celebrations’ are better known since they were reported in contemporary media. In fact, a special manual outlined all activities envisaged as part of the programme. All the federal states were mandated to participate and report their activities in the official mouth-piece of the programme The Smallpox Eradication News (English) and the Rashtriya Chechak Unmulan Samachar (Hindi).
A range of activities including lectures, debates, programmes on All India Radio (the public broadcaster) and cinema shows were organized throughout the country. However, interestingly, the dominant images that come to us today are those of public processions with men, women and even children carrying placards and raising slogans.
SCHOOLBOYS TAKE PART IN THE INDIAN VACCINATION CAMPAIGN (1963)
Copyright: WHO/ T S Satyan
The enduring images of the ‘Smallpox Eradication Week’, of people marching in procession, carrying banners etc. or performing at events, were perhaps meant to convey that the general masses welcomed the programme despite the evidence of obvious resistance in the large numbers of unvaccinated people towards the close of the first phase of the programme.[1]
This archive of images, relatively little known and under analysed, gesture towards the politics of popular representations of state managed schemes and programmes. Even as the eradication programme was faltering in achieving its targeted outcomes, the visuals remain celebratory and euphoric.
Pictures have usually been used to produce a narrative that conforms to what we already know. However if used ‘on their own terms’, as Pinney (2004:8) suggests, they might be able to narrate to us a different story about the Indian programme.
[1] Another image with the caption ‘The anti smallpox procession wends its way through Delhi streets’ , 1963, Image Credit: WHO/TS Satyan, can be viewed at the WHO Photo Library, WHO_A_010880, https://extranet.who.int/photolibrary/
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