Forty-two years ago this month, in May 1980, the World Health Assembly declared the world smallpox free. A victory over a virus. To date, the only time a human disease has been eradicated.
It’s an emotional anniversary for those of us who moved to the far corners of the globe to battle the variola virus. The deep sense of joy and fulfillment from contributing in some way to a campaign that changed lives doesn’t diminish over time.
As I wrote my memoir, Vaccines & Bayonets: Fighting Smallpox in Africa amid Tribalism, Terror and the Cold War, a few chapters brought tears to my eyes every time I worked on them. The memories are so powerful.
A smallpox memory
That’s especially true of the first chapter of my memoir. First, I remember the setting as I rode along with my husband that day.
Meninge urged our double-cab truck over washboard roads and cow tracks, pressed north in the direction of the Sahara. In the front seat with his driver, my husband leaned forward, searched the horizon. At the last mud-walled village he’d learned a group of nomads camped nearer Nigeria’s border with Niger. We needed to find them before they moved on. With no new case of smallpox reported for several weeks, this was a high-risk period when people might let down their guard. Carl constantly searched for and quickly quarantined any new case to prevent re-introduction of the disease.
From the back seat I peered out through the fine dust. Twenty-foot termite hills, spires of ochre clay, anchored a ghostly landscape that dissolved to white sky. An occasional camel grazed on thorn bush and stunted acacia.
On that road, a group of people ran up, surround our white smallpox truck. They raised their fists in salute, shouted, “Ranka didi!” (May you live long.)
Up close and personal
So comes my first close-up encounter with smallpox. Two of the women, one covered with the hideous scars of the disease, came to my window. I recoiled inside. (I won’t share the details in this post.) Later, after they gratefully held up a little toddler with perfect skin, I reflected.
We were engaged in all-out war to annihilate smallpox. A long history the women never knew about accompanied the battle. They didn’t know about 18th century inoculations, or the decades of development behind the vaccine, or about contact tracing in a race against time. . . .And they did not know that throughout history, no human disease had ever been eradicated or that countless experts declared this one unbeatable.
These women with tear-stained faces proudly showed me the child, knew the campaign against smallpox in a way that Carl and I never could. They knew that because the big white trucks came, bringing fellow Nigerians with the vaccines, smallpox had been denied access to the body of this handsome little boy, that his cousins also escaped, and their family still raised cattle and sold milk.
Joy
The memory of this encounter brings tears, but also happiness through the tears.
The last case of naturally acquired variola major was diagnosed in Bangladesh in 1975, and the last case of variola minor in 1977. But before certifying that smallpox had been eradicated, the World Health Organization scoured every nook and cranny of the planet until 1980 to make sure no case lurked, hidden.
The COVID-19 virus is very different from the virus that caused smallpox. It doesn’t have the characteristics to make it a possible candidate for eradication.
But we can control it better if we follow not just mandates, but best practice guidelines from the latest scientific information available.
Let’s think community—protecting our family, our neighbors, our co-workers. And let’s think worldwide community. Even if we look at it only from the perspective of protecting ourselves, in this day of global commerce and travel, it’s imperative that we realize we’re a global community.