Rasmussen, Anne

Documenting public health during the First World War: The International Allied Sanitary Commission, 1915-1919 - 2016.


22

In response to worsening epidemic crises due to the poor sanitary conditions of the First World War, the members of the Entente Alliance set up a sanitary commission, an allied health commission, under French administration from 1916 to 1920. Although this collaborative project was the product of a tradition rooted in the diplomatic sanitary conferences of the nineteenth century, it differed from this tradition by focusing its actions during the war on scientific approaches (statistics, experimentation) and on the sharing of war experiences.