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Much has been written about WHO. Relatively little is known, however, about the organisation’s evolving relationship with health-related personal beliefs, ‘faith-based organisations’ (FBOs), religious leaders and religious communities (‘religious actors’). This article presents findings from a 4-year research project on the ‘spiritual dimension’ of health and WHO conducted at the University of Zürich. Drawing on archival research in Geneva and interviews with current and former WHO staff, consultants and programme partners, we identify three stages in this relationship. Although since its founding individuals within WHO occasionally engaged with religious actors, it was not until the 1970s, when the primary healthcare strategy was developed in consultation with the Christian Medical Commission, that their concerns began to influence WHO policies. By the early 1990s, the failure to roll out primary healthcare globally was accompanied by a loss of interest in religion within WHO. With the spread of HIV/AIDS however, health-related religious beliefs were increasingly recognised in the development of a major quality of life instrument by the Division of Mental Health, and the work of a WHO expert committee on cancer pain relief and the subsequent establishment of palliative care. While the 1990s saw a cooling off of activities, in the years since, the HIV/AIDS, Ebola and COVID-19 crises have periodically brought religious actors to the attention of the organisation. This study focusses on what we suggest may be understood as a trend towards a closer association between the activities of WHO and religious actors, which has occurred in fits and starts and is marked by attempts at institutional translation and periods of forgetting and remembering.

Since the beginning of the World Health Organization, many of its staff members, regional offices, Member States, and directors-general have grappled with the question of what a ‘spiritual dimension’ of health looks like, and how it might enrich the health policies advocated by their organization. Contrary to the widespread perception that ‘spirituality’ is primarily related to palliative care and has emerged relatively recently within the WHO, this book shows that its history is considerably longer and more complex, and has been closely connected to the organization’s ethical aspirations, its quest for more holistic and equitable healthcare, and its struggle with the colonial legacy of international health organizations. Such ideals and struggles silently motivated many of its key actors and policies—such as the provision of universal primary healthcare—which for decades have embodied the organization’s loftiest aspirations. The WHO’s official relationship with ‘spirituality’ advanced in fits, leaps, and setbacks. At times creative and interdisciplinary, at others deeply political, this process was marked by cycles of institutional forgetting and remembering. Rather than a triumph of religious lobbyists, this book argues, the ‘spiritual dimension’ of health may be better understood as a ‘ghost’ that has haunted—and continues to haunt—the WHO as it comes to terms with its mandate of advancing health as a state of ‘complete well-being’ available to all.

AbstractThis article draws on anthropological fieldwork conducted during the West African Ebola outbreak (2014-2016) and reports of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis to discuss the role played by religion in infectious disease control. While much separates Ebola and Covid-19, the religious practices prevalent in both contexts produce similar challenges to hospital staff and caregivers. In West Africa, at least 20 % of all infections were suspected to be related to the burial of deceased Ebola victims; yet at the same time, local communities at times reacted very negatively to infectious disease control measures. This article discusses how, based on this recognition, a systematic exchange began between anthropologists, faith-based organisations (FBOs) and humanitarian organisations active in the provision of healthcare, culminating in a WHO protocol for the “safe and dignified” burial of Ebola victims. The model of ‘contactless’ adaptations of religious practices it put forth may have significantly contributed to the control of the epidemic. In the second part, this article turns to the Covid-19 pandemic to show how religious communities have responded to the risks associated with many religious practices, and how the WHO, drawing on its experience with Ebola, developed comparable guidelines aimed at religious leaders and faith communities. As the experience in West Africa has shown, it is argued, the active involvement of religious actors in the formulation of public health measures may not only help to provide safe comfort in the midst of a profoundly alienating experience, but significantly reduce the spread of the virus.