How Was Smallpox Eradicated ??

“The world and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox. ”

This statement was issued by the 33rd World Health assembly in May, 1980, 5 months after it was official that smallpox was eradicated. It's one of the two diseases that has the pleasure of being eradicated, the other being rinderpest. The last case of smallpox was registered in Somalia in 1977. We've learnt this much in academics.

History suggests that the 1st case of smallpox was some 12000 years ago, around the time the agricultural revolution began. It is also believed that this notorious disease in 430 BC caused the

Plagueof Athens and the Antonine Plague killing people in the ballpark of 3.5 to 7 million, including emperors and high lords and ladies, thus devastating the normal way of life. It was not until 1796, that Edward Jenner, an English doctor, discovered that infection to cowpox, created immunity for smallpox. Thus, coining the term vaccine.

But how was this seemingly humongous task accomplished ? How were we able to crush a disease that had created chaos in that period, when science and technology was still in its adolescence ?

In the last century many health programmes were under taken to eradicate malaria, yellow fever and yaws, all being rendered unsuccessful, what was so special about smallpox and rinderpest that we were able to systematically crush these diseases? 

It was mainly due to these reasons :-

1. Smallpox was crushed by a highly systematic approach called ring vaccination,i.e. anyone who was exposed to a smallpox patient was immediately tracked down and vaccinated as well as quarantined so as to prevent further contamination.

               

                2.    This was achievable because smallpox was easily recognisable, with the patient developing rashes all over the body in combination with time taken for the initial symptoms to appear was significantly short.

                3.    Smallpox did not have any animal reservoir, i.e. it could not infect animals. Many diseases have animal reservoir for example, the yellow fever carrying mosquito can infect monkeys which in turn can infect humans as well as COVID-19, which as evidence suggests can infect wildlife.

                4.    The ability of our bodies to fight the infection: The people who contracted smallpox created a lifelong immunity towards it. But a patient who has contracted malaria, can fall ill to it several times over the course of his life.

Eradication of smallpox, serves a powerful message to the world, that with an united approach of all nations, we can even defeat those things that are invisible to the eye. All the wars that took place on this planet has created a delusion that we are different from those who inhabit the other parts of this planet. We have to set aside all our prejudices to evolve as a species. 

This has been summed up beautifully by Carl Sagan :- “... our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe is challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark, in our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”