Louis Wiesner, 86; Ran Medical Program for Relief Agency

Louis Wiesner, 86, who brought health services to victims of war and natural disasters through his work with the International Rescue Committee, died Sept. 20 in Meredith, N.H. The cause of death was not disclosed.

Wiesner was a retired diplomat who had directed the State Department’s Office of Refugees and Migration when he joined the International Rescue Committee in 1975.

He created the group’s medical program and served as its director from 1975 to 1984.

Born in Port Huron, Mich., he was educated at the University of Michigan and Harvard, where he was a teaching fellow from 1939 to 1942. He worked at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Office of Strategic Services before joining the Foreign Service in 1944. He served in West Germany under the Allied Military Government after World War II and in Vietnam from 1967 to 1970.

He served as U.S. disaster relief coordinator and regional refugee chief in Vietnam. After his retirement from the rescue committee, he published a study of Vietnamese refugees in 1984 called “Victims and Survivors: Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Viet-Nam, 1954-75.”