Portugal, the World Health Organisation and the Regional Office for Africa: From Founding Member to Outcast (1948–1966)

Abstract

This article discusses the emergence, organisation, interaction and evolution of regional bodies responsible for cooperation in health in sub-Saharan Africa from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. Focusing on Portugal’s under-researched role in the CCTA and the WHO’s regional office (AFRO), it addresses the issue of health diplomacy and inter-regional cooperation during a period of significant political change on the African continent. Drawing from a great variety of published and archival sources, it provides an overview of the strategies pursued by Portugal and other colonial powers with regard to trans-national and regional cooperation in health, against the background of the complex interplay of regional interests and overlapping membership of CCTA and AFRO. It shows how the tensions between constructive international and regional engagement on the one hand and colonial sovereignty and legitimacy on the other played out and shifted over time in the African region. In addition, it discusses Portugal’s health diplomacy against the background of the membership of newly independent African countries of CCTA and AFRO, and its refusal to decolonise, eventually precipitated the country’s suspension from WHO-AFRO and all technical cooperation in 1966.

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