Is health a more central issue in international public development policies? Health appears nowadays as a central issue in international development’s field. This issue is nevertheless ambiguous: health is whether presented as an end, whether as a simple mean of development.Analysing health and development as historical concepts enables us to evaluate the relative contribution of health to development. We explored contexts, knowledge and public politics since 1945 in order to give a clearer picture of health political stakes in current policies and development strategies. In this perspective health appears as an important operating mean through which social transformations occur.