Abstract

TESTA, Daniela Edelvis. The fight against polio: a social-medical alliance, Buenos Aires, 1943. Salud colectiva [online]. 2012, vol.8, n.3, pp.299-314. ISSN 1851-8265.

The present article analyzes the emergence of a volunteer-based social assistance organization that played an active role in the health care provided for poliomyelitis in Argentina: Asociación para la Lucha contra la Parálisis Infantil (Association for the Fight against Child Paralysis). This institution was created in Buenos Aires in 1943 by a group of women from upper and middle class social sectors. In a context of biomedical uncertainty, the organization mobilized material and symbolic resources to respond to the need for rehabilitation of the permanent physical conditions the disease provoked in its victims. Using as a source the institutional memories of the organization, the article demonstrates how doctors and philanthropists formed a social-medical alliance and developed a fundamental interest in practicing a form of treatment sustained in a framework that united Christian ideas with medical and rehabilitative innovations.

Keywords : Poliomyelitis; Physicians; Social Assistance; Beneficence; Rehabilitation.

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