Andrija Stampar

ANDRIJA STAMPAR, ONE OF the most charismatic and beloved figures in 20th century public health, was born in the village of Drenovac, Croatia, on September 1, 1888. His father was a schoolteacher who, because of his liberal views, had to move frequently to escape the consequences of his political convictions.1 Young Andrija absorbed his father’s values and, though a brilliant student, sometimes came into conflict with his teachers when he asserted his right to be a “free thinker.”2 After graduating from gymnasium in 1906, he enrolled at the University of Vienna Medical School. There he was attracted to Ludwig Teleky’s lectures on social medicine, which made a deep impression.2 Stampar graduated from medical school in 1911 and worked for a while as a hospital physician and as a district health officer. At the end of the First World War, he moved to Zagreb to take up an appointment as Health Adviser to the Croatian Commission for Social Welfare. He became intensely involved with health policy, publishing a book and a series of outspoken articles in the journal Jugoslavenska njiva, one of which is excerpted here. At age 31 he was appointed Head of the Department of Public Health in Belgrade, in the newly constituted country of Yugoslavia.3 Stampar’s inspiring personality, as well as his powerful and progressive ideas, attracted a dedicated group of young health workers. By 1930, his department had created more than 250 health-related institutions, from central research and policy institutes in each of the provinces to hundreds of “health stations” in rural areas.4 In 1927, with the help of a large grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, he opened the School of Public Health and the Institute of Hygiene in Zagreb.5 Among its many progressive features was the “Peasants University,” specially designed health seminars for rural villagers conducted for several months at a time in the Public Health School.6 In 1930, as the politics of Yugoslavia shifted to fascism, Stampar was removed from his position as Head of the Department of Public Health in Belgrade. In response, he turned his attention to international health. He went to work full-time for the Health Organization of the League of Nations and from 1931 to 1933 traveled extensively in Europe and the United States, then from 1933 to 1936 in China.2 Back in Europe in 1936 and 1937, he prepared an official report on European schools of public health and studied the most effective methods of maternal and child protection. In 1938 and 1939, he toured the United States and Canada and lectured on hygiene and social medicine at several major universities. In 1939, as political events shifted once again in Yugoslavia, Stampar returned to Zagreb to take over the Chair of Hygiene and Social Medicine.2 He was elected Dean of the Medical School for the 1940–1941 academic year, but the invasion of Yugoslavia by Germany in April 1941 ended his tenure and led to his imprisonment. He was interned in Graz, Austria, until liberated by the arrival of the Russian army in 1945. In May of that year, he resumed his professorship at the Zagreb Medical School and became Director of the School of Public Health. He was Rector of Zagreb University for the 1945–1946 academic year, and Dean of the Medical School from 1952 to 1957. In what was perhaps his most heralded contribution, Stampar played a critical role in the creation of the World Health Organization (WHO). Planning for the WHO began in earnest in early 1946 under the aegis of the Economic and Social Council of the emerging United Nations organization. Elected Vice President of the Council, Stampar was also appointed to the Technical Preparatory Committee, charged with creating a constitution and initial agenda for the as-yet-unnamed international health organization. Stampar helped draft the constitution, most notably its famous Preamble, which has been called “the Magna Carta of health.”7 The WHO’s constitution was provisionally adopted at an International Health Conference in New York City in the summer of 1946, and that same conference created an Interim Commission to manage the functions of the WHO until formal ratification of its constitution. Stampar chaired the Interim Commission until the first World Health Assembly, called in the summer of 1948 upon ratification of the constitution. He presided over the inaugural Assembly meeting as its unanimously elected president. Stampar remained active in the WHO until his death on June 26, 1958.

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