Eradicating Smallpox

1. Eradicating Smallpox

2. Whether traveling on boats or trains, immigrants were often required to undergo vaccination.

3. With the rise of air travel, smallpox could spread across continents and oceans within forty-eight hours or less.

4. King Tauf-AhauTupou III of Tonga demonstrates a jet-injector.

5. The bifurcated needle was easy to carry into the field. After sterilization, the needle could be re-used up to 100 times, making it extremely cost-effective. Ultimately, the bifurcated needle came to be preferred over the jet injector.

6. Because many people are nomadic, WHO workers worried that large populations might go unvaccinated. E2 which attacked smallpox at the chain of transmission enabled WHO workers to eradicate smallpox—even when segments of the population were not vaccinated.

7. The front and back of the WHO smallpox recognition card. The card, which portrays a patient with relatively mild smallpox, was widely used from 1971 to facilitate case detection in endemic countries.

8. Low levels of literacy in smallpox infested regions meant that WHO needed to communicate using images, not written text. Posters such as this one were used to educate people on the dangers of smallpox and the need for vaccination.

9. Ali MaowMaalin had worked temporarily as a smallpox vaccinator but he had not been successfully vaccinated and on October 22, 1977, he contracted the disease after being exposed to two children with smallpox. He ultimately recovered from the disease.

10. Although the last case of smallpox occurred in 1977, it was not until 1980 that the WHO felt confident that smallpox had been completely eradicated.