Corporate Philanthropy and Epidemics Rockefeller Foundation and Anti-Hookworm

This book examines the Rockefeller Foundation’s involvement in the hookworm eradication programme in colonial Fiji, framed within the rise of corporate philanthropy in the United States during the late nineteenth century. Influenced by the Social Gospel movement, industrialists like Carnegie established foundations to address social issues. Inspired by this model, the Rockefellers funded the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission to combat hookworm in the American South, a disease dubbed the ‘lazy disease’ for its impact on worker productivity, particularly in plantations. The success of this campaign led to a global hookworm eradication programme under the International Health Board. Fiji, then a British colony, was selected as a key site in the 1920s and 1930s, largely through the efforts of Dr Samuel Lambert, who had experience with health issues in the Pacific. The colonial administration, though financially limited, supported the programme.