Abstract
‘Tropical and international public health’ considers the establishment of tropical public health tied to colonial concerns before World War I; the influence of missionary medicine; and early international health action. After World War II, new international movements emerged, such as the World Health Organization, and variants of public health located in an expanding range of international and global institutions. There was a rise in primary health care and health promotion, but the large-scale introduction of International Monetary Fund-sponsored structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s brought the decline of state-run public health programmes and the return of the diseases of poverty and infectious disease. In the midst of this, came a new epidemic: HIV/AIDS.
