Dr. Bojan Pirc (1901–1991), an internationally recognized medical statistician: On the 110th Anniversary of His Birth
Background: Using Andrija Štampar’s ideology, modern Slovenian public healthcare following the First World War gradually transformed private healthcare into public healthcare available to everyone. Public healthcare professionals specializing in social medicine, hygiene, healthcare organizatio...
Main Authors: | , |
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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Slovenian Medical Association
2011-03-01
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Series: | Zdravniški Vestnik |
Online Access: | http://vestnik.szd.si/index.php/ZdravVest/article/view/429 |
Summary: | Background: Using Andrija Štampar’s ideology,
modern Slovenian public healthcare following
the First World War gradually transformed private
healthcare into public healthcare available
to everyone. Public healthcare professionals specializing
in social medicine, hygiene, healthcare
organization, and medical statistics were trained
in Europe and in the USA under the auspices of
the United Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation.
This paper discusses the first Slovenian (Yugoslav)
and international expert in medical and
vital statistics, Bojan Pirc.
Methods: A retrospective historical-medical approach
was used to examine the primary and
secondary sources on Bojan Pirc’s life and work.
The results were also obtained by analyzing Pirc’s
extensive bibliography of research and technical
articles.
Results: In the academic year 1927/28, the physician
Bojan Pirc (1901–1991) studied at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Public School of Health in
Baltimore on a Rockefeller Foundation grant.
There he took graduate-level courses in statistics,
epidemiology, public healthcare organization,
and hygiene. He became the leading Yugoslav
expert in medical and vital statistics. From 1928
onwards, he worked at the Central Hygienic Institute
in Belgrade, serving as head of the social
medicine department for most of his time there.
From 1948 to 1955 Pirc was Director of the Yugoslav
Medical Sstatistics Office, and from 1955 to
1961 he served as a World Health Organization
expert, for which his duties included heading the
Epidemiology Research Department in Geneva.
From 1955 to 1971, he held the position of professor
at the Zagreb Medical Faculty, and from
1967 to 1974 he served as a part-time statistics instructor at the Ljubljana Medical Faculty, then
till 1980 as its professor. From 1968 to 1980 he
headed the graduate program in public healthcare
in Ljubljana and Maribor as part of the Andrija
Štampar School of Public Health in Zagreb.
He helped organize the Yugoslav hygiene service
and analyzed the dynamics of infectious diseases
in Yugoslavia (1919–1928). He and his brother Ivo
Pirc coauthored several textbooks on hygiene
and prepared a basic study titled Zdravje v Sloveniji
I – Življenjska bilanca Slovenije v letih 1921–
1935 (Health in Slovenia I: Births and Deaths in
Slovenia, 1921–1935). In addition, he developed
a medical statistics system methodology for all
of Yugoslavia, which was also well received internationally.
Thanks to him, medical statistics
became an independent research area. |
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ISSN: | 1318-0347 1581-0224 |