Socrates Litsios

books and publications

List of publications

Books:

  • The Tomorrow of Malaria. 1996.Published by Pacific Press, Wellington, New Zealand and distributed by the Natural History Book Services in the UK. It was awarded the Pacific Prize by Pacific Press. It went into a second print in 1997. It has been very favourably reviewed in a number of journals including Nature, Parasitology Today, and Medical History.
  • Plague Legends: From the Miasmas of Hippocrates to the Microbes of Pasteur. 2001. Published by Science & Humanities Press, Chesterfield, MO, USA.
  • The third ten years of the World Health Organization. 2009. Published by the World Health Organization, Geneva. The third ten years of the World Health Organization is a sequel to the previous two volumes. Based almost exclusively on official records and archives from that period, it offers insights into not only the Organization itself but also the political, social and economic background against which many far-reaching health decisions were made. It reflects the first five of the ‘Mahler years’, which saw growing support for the primary health care movement. Thirty years after Alma-Ata, that movement is once again much in evidence; primary health care is again a WHO priority, in a renewed, reinvigorated form. This volume will be of great assistance to scholars, historians and researchers and to the many WHO staff members, past and present, who will be able to turn these pages and remember that they, too, were a part of this history.
  • The fourth ten years of the World Health Organization. 2012. Published by the World Health Organization, Geneva.

Articles:

  • 1971:
    • The Principles and Methods of Evaluation of National Health Plans. International Journal of Health Services, Volume 01, Number 1, Pages 79-85.
  • 1975:
    • Seven Principles of Primary Health Care. Christian Medical Commission Eighth Annual Meeting, Zurich
  • 1976:
    • Developing a Cost and Outcome Evaluation System. International Journal of Health Services, Volume 06, Number 2, Pages 345-360.
    • 1977:
    • A System of Planning for Rural Development. International Conference on Rural Development Technology: An Integrated Approach, Asian Institute of Technology, June
  • 1978:
    • Community Evaluation – a Case for Maternal-child Health. Birth-weight Distribution – an Indicator of Social Development., Report from a SAREC/WHO Workshop, SAREC Report, R:2 1978, 64-6
  • 1979:
    • PHC as it Affects the Industrialized Countries. Presentation at a one-day meeting with NGOs on PHC and the NIEO, Geneva September.
  • 1982:
    • Primary Health Care and Adult Education: Opportunities for the Joining of Forces. Convergence, Volume XV, Number 2, Pages 14-21.
  • 1987:
    • Intersectoral Collaboration for the Promotion of Primary Health Care-Based Vector Control: Considerations related to malaria World Health Organization WHO/MAL/87.1039
  • 1993:
    • Which Way for malaria control and epidemiological services? World Health Forum 14: 43-51
  • 1994:
    • Sustainable development is healthy development. World Health Forum 15: 193-5
  • 1997:
    • Malaria Control, the Cold War, and the Postwar Reorganization of International Assistance. Medical Anthropology, 17 (3): 255-278
    • René J. Dubos and Fred L. Soper: Their Contrasting Views on Vector and Disease Eradication. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Autumn: 138-149.
  • 1998:
    • Arnoldo Gabalon’s independent path for malaria control and public health in the Tropics: a lost “paradigm” for WHO. Parassitologia 40: 231-238.
  • 2000:
    • Fred L. Soper’s Ignored Criticism of WHO’s Approach to Malaria Eradication. Parasitologia 42: 167-172.
  • 2001:
    • William Crawford Gorgas (1854-1920). Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Summer: 368-378
  • 2002:
    • The Long and Difficult Road to Alma-Ata: A Personal Reflection. International Journal of Health Services, Volume 32, Number 4, Pages 709-732.
    • Malaria Control and the Future of International Public Health in Elizabeth Casman and Hadi Dowlatabadi (editors) The Contextual Determinants of Malaria (Washington DC: Resources for the Future)
  • 2003:
    • Charles Dickens and the Movement for Sanitary Reform. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Volume 6; number 2 (spring 2003): 183-99.
  • 2004:
    • WHO, PHC and the NGO Community : the Need for a More Focussed Commitment. Development journal on Politics of Health, 47(2): 57-63. Non Governmental Organization (NGO) support proved critical in helping WHO launch the PHC approach in the mid 1970 s. Enthusiasm for PHC led to a number of WHO/NGO initiatives which showed early promise, but which were not strong enough to survive the onslaught of ‘selective PHC’. Socrates Litsios argues that PHC is too important an idea to let drop & that NGOs have a critical role to play in keeping the PHC spirit alive. He underlines that past experiences need to be carefully reviewed in order to learn how to do better in the future. More importantly, NGOs need to better understand how best to ‘use’ WHO. 1 Figure, 19 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Ltd., copyright 2004 Society for International Development (www.sidint.org).
    • The Christian Medical Commission and the Development of WHO’s Primary Health Care Approach. American Journal of Public Health, November, 94(11): 1884-1893.
  • 2005:
  • 2007:
    • Selskar Gunn and Paul Russell of the Rockefeller Foundation: A Contrast in Styles and Malaria and International Health Organizations in Benjamin B Page and David A Valone (editors) Philanthropic Foundations and the Globalization of Scientific Medicine and Public Health (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America)
    • Malaria and International Health Organizations in Benjamin B Page and David A Valone (editors) Philanthropic Foundations and the Globalization of Scientific Medicine and Public Health (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America) Malaria Quinnipiac
  • 2008:
    • Selskar ‘Mike’ Gunn and Public Health Reform in Europe in Iris Borowy and Anne Hardy (editors Of Medicine and Men: Biographies and Ideas in European Social Medicine between World Wars (Germany, Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften) 23-43.
  • 2009:
    • The Rockefeller Foundation’s Struggle to Correlate Its Existing Medical Program with Public Health Work in China in Iris Borowy, Edito Uneasy Encounters: The Politics of Medicine and Health in China 1900-1937, (Germany, Peter Lang) 177-203.
  • 2010:
  • 2011:
    • John Black Grant – a 20th century public health giant in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Volume 54, no. 4 532-549.
    • District Health Systems – Is this WHO Initiative still a viable concept? presented at the U of Basel History of Health Care in Africa – September District Health Systems Paper Basel
  • 2014:
  • 2015:
    • Re-imagining the control of malaria in tropical Africa during the early years of the World Health Organization – Malaria Journal,
    • On the Origin of Primary Health Care in ‘Health for All: The Journey to Universal Health Coverage’, June
  • 2016:
    • Rural Hygiene in the early years of the World Health Organization: another casualty of the Cold War? – An Inst Hig Med Trop, Volume 16,