International Health—a Retrospective Memoir

INTERNATIONAL HEALTH—A RETROSPECTIVE MEMOIR W. R. AYKROYD* The new headquarters building of the World Health Organization in Geneva, formally opened in May, 1966, is the creation ofa Swiss architect, the lateJean Tschumi ofLausanne, whose design won the first prize in an international contest in i960. With its eight floors standing on twenty-two pillars, and façades in which aluminum, glass, marble, and concrete are harmoniously blended, the building gives an impression of combined strength and lightness, somehow suggesting hope for the future. Within, utility and convenience take precedence, but there is also much to please the eye, including decorative gifts from member countries, such as silk from Thailand for the curtains ofcommittee rooms, unusual marble from the U.S.S.R. for flooring, a bust ofMarie Curie from Poland, and a bronze statue ofImhotepfromthe UnitedArab Republic. The library has 100,000 volumes andreceives 2,700 medical and scientific periodicals. The building is in fact one of the most impressive and beautiful modern buildings in Europe, surpassing Tschumi's earlier masterpiece, the Nestlé offices in Vevey. It is a headquarters worthy of a great international organization which has some 126 contributing member states, a staffof over 4,000 in Geneva and its six regional offices, and an annual budget, from all sources, ofabout $140 million. In April, 1967, 1 went with my wife to Geneva to do a short-term consultantjob for WHO. Geneva was not new to us; it had been our home in early married life in the i93o's, when I was a member of the League of Nations Health Section, which was the League's permanent salaried secretariat inthefield ofhealth. The Section was responsible to a "Health Committee " ofsome twenty members, appointed by a rather complicated procedure ; most ofits members were leaders in public health in various coun- * Senior lecturer, Department of Human Nutrition, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, until retirement in 1966. Present address: Queen Anne House, Charlbury, Oxford, England. Publication costs were kindly contributed to Perspectives by The Burroughs Wellcome Fund. 273 tries, but they sat in their personal capacities and not as government delegates . The term "League of Nations Health Organization" covers both the Health Committee and the Health Section, and in fact the total ensemble of the League's health activities. The Section therefore corresponded with the salaried staffofWHO, responsible through the directorgeneral to the World Health Assembly and the WHO Executive Board. We were prompted to note changes which have taken place in thirty years. I myselfwas particularly interested in the comparison between the Health Section and the WHO oftoday with its staffof several thousand workers, while my wife was more interested in Geneva itselfand its inhabitants . The location, climate, social atmosphere, and people ofGeneva have had an important bearing on international affairs, but this question is rather outside the scope ofthe present article. It was noteworthy to find that international staffmembers, chatting on terraces which offered a magnificent view ofthe blue lake with Mont Blanc in the dim background, still ask each other, as we did in the 1930's: "What is it about Geneva that gets you down?" Various answers are given. Some say that the city is so hemmed in by mountains that it lacks a free circulation offresh air; others, on the contrary, refer to the bitter winds from the Alps which blow across the lake in the winter. But the most common answer is the simple (and discourteous ) one: "the Genevois." While the city has grown enormously in size and wealth during recent decades, the Genevois seem to remain much the same: honest, respectable, efficient, and devoid ofliveliness and charm. The philosophically minded try to probe a little deeper: "Not for nothing ," they say, "is Geneva Calvin's city," sometimes adding the speculation whether Geneva produced Calvinism or Calvinism produced Geneva. But whatever the forces which have molded the qualities ofits inhabitants, Geneva's proud claim to be called "City of Refuge" should not be forgotten . For generations it has offered a haven to political refugees of all kinds; the brasserie where Lenin, a fugitive from Imperial Russia, ate his cheap evening meal is among the sights shown to tourists. Altogether, for good...