1st Edition
Public Health and National Reconstruction in Post-War Asia International Influences, Local Transformations
This book, based on extensive original research, considers the transformation of public health systems in major East, South and Southeast Asian countries in the period following the Second World War. It examines how public health concepts, policies, institutions and practices were improved, shows how international health standards were implemented, sometimes through the direct intervention of transnational organisations, and explores how indigenous traditions and local social and cultural concerns affected developments, with, in some cases, the construction of public health systems forming an important part of nation-building in post-war and post-independence countries. Throughout, the book relates developments in public health systems to people’s health, demographic changes, and economic and social reconstruction projects.
1. Introduction: National Health, International Interests Ka-che Yip and Liping Bu 2. Transition to Decolonization: the Search for a Health Policy in Postwar Hong Kong, 1945-1985 Ka-che Yip 3. The Patriotic Health Movement and China’s Socialist Reconstruction: Fighting Disease and Transforming Society, 1950-1980 Liping Bu 4. Diseases, Peasants and Nation-Building in Rural China, 1950s: Social Conformity, Institutional Strengthening, and Political Indoctrination Xiaoping Fang 5. Learning from the Soviet Union: Pavlovian Influence in Chinese Medicine, 1950s Gao Xi 6. Public Health and People’s Health: Contrasting the Paths in Healthcare Systems of North and South Koreas, 1945-1960 Shin Dongwon 7. Impact of Government-Foundation Cooperation: Healthcare System Development in Postwar Japan Kazumi Noguchi 8. Medicine, Philanthropy, and Nationhood: Tensions of Different Visions in India Shirish N Kavadi 9. The Campaign against the Big Four Endemic Diseases and Indonesia’s Engagement with the WHO during the Cold War 1950s Vivek Neelakantan 10. A Promise of Desire: On the Politics of Healthcare and Moral Discourse in Thailand, 1950-2010 Davisakd Puaksom
Biography
Liping Bu is a Professor in the Department of History at Alma College, Michigan, USA
Ka-che Yip is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA
The essays are well researched, and though they often contain similar elements, such as Western imperialism and governmental centralization, the authors avoid repetition by detailing the nuances of each country's particular situation. Overall, a strong publication. - J. P. Bourgeois, Nicholls State University
"Historians of public health in the post-World War II period, anywhere in the world, would [...] find much to think about in this volume’s interesting range of contributions on modern Asian public health history." - Marta E. Hanson, Pacific Affairs: Volume 89, No. 3 – September 2016
