Health and disease in La Pampa: public policies in a new Argentine province (1945-1975)

Abstract

This article details the public health policies in La Pampa (Argentina) during the second half of the twentieth century related to the control of certain epidemics and endemic diseases (tuberculosis, smallpox, venereal, Chagas’ disease and poliomyelitis). Through edited and unpublished sources, from the specialized and non-specialized press, reports of officials, censuses and other documents, advances are made in the description and analysis of the central aspects on health and disease of the population in a peripheral area of Argentina. The Pampa was a National Territory from 1884, when the lands belonging to indigenous societies were put into production, until its formation as a province in 1952. Between 1945 and 1975, the various territorial and provincial health policies underwent changes in their structure, legislation and planning, some substantive ones, which were in keeping with the events at national level or trying to solve problems specific to the socio-cultural environment of the Pampas. The population, much of it coming from overseas countries, had a relative growth, and the economic activities, linked to the agricultural-livestock operation, did not undergo major changes. In the international context of progress in social medicine, immunization campaigns and other preventive practices were consolidated in La Pampa, despite frequent replacements and political violence, that allow us to observe differences and similarities with what happened at the national level during a key period in Argentine history.