Imagine this: rows upon rows upon rows of flimsy, thin white-cotton covered beds. Nurses are scarce throughout the building. Nevertheless, one darts out unexpectedly occasionally to place a cold cloth on a man or a woman. Patients suffering with chills, vomiting, and fever lie weakly on their beds, hardly moving a muscle. The odor of unwashed bodies accompanied with the stale vomit pollute the air with their stench. In fact, the smell is so strong; one can almost taste it—along with the despair and grief in the room. The faint buzz of the hanging electric light along with the occasional cough are the only sounds one hears. These patients—slowly dying in the hospital cots—are victims of fatal disease called smallpox. Throughout history, smallpox, …show more content…
In 1966, the WHO voted to create a program for worldwide eradication of smallpox (Henderson). Before that, smallpox control efforts often lied in mass vaccination programs. Rarely did anyone pay attention to the control of outbreaks. In November of 1965, the U.S. Government approached Donald Henderson to take responsibility for the task (2). The project would cover 18 countries in Western and Central Africa. The project only $2.7 million allocated—and that was not even enough to cover the cost of the vaccination! Several countries did not approve of the idea because of its cost and the sheer impossibility of the task. According to Donald Henderson, Chief of the World Health Organization’s global smallpox eradication program, Director-General Marcolino Gomes Candau was very opposed to the program “because the malaria eradication program wasn’t doing very …show more content…
In 1966, the 19th World Health Assembly requested that the Director-General (Marcolino Gomes Candau) initiate the action to carry out a worldwide smallpox eradication program. The initial ideas of the program began in 1948; however, the program did not fully finish until after 1980. The smallpox eradication program focused on prevention rather than mass vaccinations. Health workers would travel to Africa to warn the population about the dangers of smallpox. Often they would go to schools and bus stations with a picture of a sick child, asking people if anyone they knew had like symptoms (“Prevention”). Surveillance was also a key part of the program—the health workers would have to monitor the health of the population, so they could tell who was becoming sick. Health workers would collect specimens from scabs and pus to examine in a laboratory (3). Finally, after all their hard work, the SEP found the last case of smallpox and eliminated it. A Somalian man, Ali Maow Maalin, contracted the last case of smallpox in 1978. Along with other “last cases” from other countries, Maalin helped finally rid the world of this deadly disease. On October 26, 1979, the World Health Organization presented a logo certifying the eradication of smallpox in Somalia, and, consequently the world (“Last Cases of