THE ERADICATION
OF SMALLPOX: In 1958 the Soviet Union went before the World Health Assembly to request an international campaign to eliminate smallpox. From this proposal the Soviet Union, even at the height of the Cold War, was able to generate universal support toward this goal. Historically, smallpox had proven to be a vicious killer. In A.D. 65, the Roman Empire was devastated by an epidemic that raged for 15 years, killing 25-35 percent of the poplulation. It hit a completely nonimmune population, the disease having first appeared in Asia some one hundred years earlier. (1,2) Over subsequent centuries devastating pandemics claimed millions of lives in China, Japan, Europe, and the Americas. Cortez captured Mexico City with a small band of exhausted Spanish soldiers because the Europeans had unknowingly spread smallpox before them. When Cortez launched his final attack, few Aztec soldiers were left alive. Smallpox, together with measles, TB, and Influenza claimed an estimated 56 million lives during the initial years of the Spanish conquest.(3) By 1958, when the Soviets initiated global eradication, smallpox was killing 2 million people a year, and cases could be found in thirty-three countries. (An important point for those with the mistaken belief that smallpox was 'disappearing' on its own.) (4) The virus could be spread by touch or respiration. A single milliliter droplet of human lung exhalant contained 1000 more viruses than were necessary to produce infection. (4) Eradication required over 250 million doses of vaccine per year in a worldwide effort to reach all citizens, even in the midst of war, dictatorships, famines and local disasters. In Bangladesh the campaign faced its toughest battle due to high population and ancient smallpox endemicity. While working in tropical countries an outbreak occurred in Yugoslavia in 1972, later outbreaks occurred in Sudan and India. (5) In some areas rewards were offered to people who could steer the immunization teams to active smallpox cases. Ailing persons were quarantined and everyone in the region vaccinated. By 1974 the health team was confident of victory in Bangladesh when huge flooding came. Famine and mass displacement of refugees greatly compounded the difficulties of immunization. The immunization teams continued their efforts and finally had driven the disease to one small village outside the city of Chittagong. Following local immunization, word came that yet another pocket of smallpox had been found on Bhola, a nearby island. Finally, in November, 1975 the announcent came that a three-year old Bangladeshi girl named Rahima Banu had been cured. She was the last case of wild variola major in human history. Two years later , on October 26, 1977, the last case of the less virulent variola minor, Ali Maow Maalin, would be found in Merka, Somalia. Eradication took eleven years, involving about a hundred highly trained professionals and thousands of local health workers. It was achieved at a cost of some $300 million. On May 8, 1980 the World Health Assembly formally declared that "the World and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox, which was a devastating disease sweeping in epidemic form through many countries since earliest times, leaving death, blindness, and disfigurement in its wake and which only a decade ago was rampant in Africa, Asia, and South America." (6) REFERENCES: " The role of science is not to provide everlasting truth; but rather, to provide a modest obstacle to everlasting error." -Anon- |