Szeming Sze

Szeming Sze (Chinese: 施思明, Pinyin: Shī Sīmíng; April 5, 1908 – October 27, 1998) was a prominent Chinese diplomat and the co-founder who helped build the World Health Organization into a specialized United Nations agency.

Dr. Sze was born in Tientsin (now Tianjin), China. He was the eldest son of Dr. Alfred Sao-ke Sze, who became his country's Ambassador to Great Britain and, later, the United States.

Dr. Sze received degrees in chemistry from Winchester College and medicine from Christ's College, Cambridge (1925 to 1928), and interned in Britain, where he was inspired by his residency at St. Thomas Hospital in a London slum to do public service, before returning to China in 1934.

He was in the United States when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, and he joined the Lend-Lease program for the Chinese Government. Dr. Sze attended the San Francisco Conference that gave birth to the United Nations as an official of Chinese delegation and medical expert.

Before the San Francisco Conference on International Organization opened on April 25, 1945, the US and UK delegates had consulted each other and had agreed that no questions in the field of health would be included on the conference agenda. Dr. Szeming Sze from the Chinese delegation, Dr. de Paula Souza from the Brazilian delegation and Dr. Karl Evang from the Norwegian delegation, not knowing of the US-UK consultations, agreed that the question of establishing a new international health organization should be put on the conference agenda. Since China was one of the four sponsoring powers of the Conference, it was thought that Dr. Sze should get the Chinese delegation to initiate the proposal for a proposed amendment to the draft Charter which had been prepared at Dumbarton Oaks. Unfortunately, there was not sufficient time left for submission of an amendment. So another approach was tried in the form of a resolution for Commission II, Committee 3, of which Sir Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar of India was the Chairman, calling for an international health conference of Member States which would have as its aim the establishment of an international health organization. The draft resolution was formally submitted as a joint proposal of the Chinese and Brazilian delegations. The resolution got bogged down in the Committee. By another twist of fate, Dr. Sze one day found himself sitting next to Mr Alger Hiss, Secretary-General of the Conference, at an official dinner. Dr. Sze asked Mr Hiss for his advice, who suggested rewriting the resolution in the form of a declaration, which would not be considered as being under the same interdiction as a resolution. This advice turned out to be very sound, and with overwhelming support the Declaration was adopted. This was the beginning of the future World Health Organization.

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