Global Eradication of Smallpox Certified

On 8 May 1980, the 33rd World Health Assembly in Geneva declared the world free of smallpox. It was the first human disease ever wiped out on purpose. Smallpox had killed people for thousands of years, and in the 20th century alone it was blamed for an estimated 300 million deaths. Its end came not from a single discovery but from a long international campaign of vaccinators, epidemiologists and local health workers who tracked the virus down village by village.

Protection had existed for nearly two centuries. In 1796 the English doctor Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had caught cowpox were spared smallpox, and his work laid the basis for vaccination. Yet in 1967 the disease was still endemic in 33 countries with a combined population of about 1.2 billion, and an estimated 10 to 15 million cases occurred each year. Much of the vaccine in use was of poor quality, and mass campaigns struggled to reach crowded cities and remote areas alike.