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Both the Pan American Union and the Sanitary Bureau were fortunate in the early 1920s in the selection of the men who would direct them. Mr. Leo Rowe, an American law and political science professor who devoted most of his life to the Pan-American cause, was named the Pan American Union's director general and served in that post until his death in an automobile accident in 1946. 
Dr. John D. Long, PAHO's first
"traveling representative,"
campaigned throughout Latin
America against plague and
other epidemic diseases.
(Photo ©OAS) |
Dr. Hugh Cumming, a prominent U.S. expert on sanitation and immigration issues, was appointed both U.S. surgeon general and director of the Pan American Sanitary Bureau in 1920 and served as director of the Bureau until 1947. Both dedicated Pan-Americanists, Mr. Rowe and Dr. Cumming shared a close friendship based on mutual respect and common goals, and their personal closeness helped forge strong ties between the Pan American Union and the Bureau. Determined institution builders, they worked diligently and strategically to broaden the focus and responsibilities of their organizations.
Perhaps their most significant collaboration was in using the Pan American Union's structure as an institutional umbrella to support the growth and development of the smaller Bureau. This was achieved through Pan American Union meetings and other conferences dealing with the public health structure in the Americas. At the Pan American Union's behest, a new series of meetings of ministers (then called "national directors") of health was launched, eventually alternating with the sanitary conferences every two years. These meetings, which were organized by the Bureau, helped ensure that member countries' top health officials had a say in-and would more enthusiastically support-the Bureau's work.
| For the past 100 years, the Pan American Health Organization and the Organization of American States have grown and evolved together, in the process pioneering forms of international cooperation in the fight against poverty, ignorance, and disease. |
Within this framework, the Bureau's budget expanded tenfold between 1921 and 1926, from US$5,000 to US$50,000. Its still-small staff was augmented by public health experts seconded from the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS), which Dr. Cumming also headed as U.S. surgeon general. The Bureau's concerns continued to expand, now including a whole new range of issues, from immigration to drug addiction and venereal disease.
During the 1920s, the Bureau acquired the first of what would become a long line of "traveling representatives." Dr. John Long, auxiliary surgeon general of the USPHS (and later the Bureau's own assistant director), undertook missions for the Bureau to more than half the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, traveling to remote areas as well as urban centers to examine health conditions and coordinate national health authorities' work with that of the Bureau. Chief among Dr. Long's concerns was controlling rats in the region's ports, as the most effective means of stopping the spread of bubonic plague. Dr. Long's work was critical to the region's success in fighting that disease.
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