ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the efforts of both the Rockefeller Foundation and Grace Schneiders-Howard in the fight against hookworm in Suriname in particular, and their efforts to improve the public health system on the plantations and in the capital city of Paramaribo in general. It shows that the Foundation and the local public health and sanitation officials encountered not only enthusiasm and admiration, but also indifference, cynicism, and hostility. Even though the Rockefeller Foundation left Suriname on a sour note, it certainly did not mean that the fight against hookworm was doomed. The Foundation’s banner was held aloft by Grace Schneiders-Howard. She openly called for more financial support for public health care and less for education. The combination of assistance and notions of supremacy, also known as the white man’s burden, were prevalent in the West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but not necessarily appreciated at the receiving end.
