Today, I am thankful for those who brought an end to an infectious scourge.
Yesterday, I commenced a week-long tribute to World Immunization Week (WIW), the global campaign led by the World Health Organization (WHO) to heighten awareness to the power of global vaccination.
On this day (Apr 28), I’ll continue the theme by paying tribute to the progress we’ve made in the last 2 centuries to eliminate diseases with vaccination. After Jenner’s success was published and publicized, vaccination with cow pox flourished. In due time, vaccination became widely accepted, gradually fully replacing the older practice of ‘variolation.’
Vaccination became widely accepted and gradually replaced the practice of variolation. At some point in the 1800s (the precise time remains unclear), the virus used to make the smallpox vaccine changed from cowpox to vaccinia virus. Yet, even by the beginning of the 20th Century, more than 100 years after Jenner’s discovery, small pox remained a global scourge. In fact, in the early 1900s, an average of ~50,000 smallpox cases would occur each year in the US, and an active infection with a major form of this disease was associated with ~1,500 annual deaths. In the United States and many other developed nations in the Northern Hemisphere, pharmaceutical companies went on a massive campaign to develop sufficient quantities of vaccine to vaccinate the entire populace. By 1952, small pox was effectively eliminated in North America, and Europe followed just a year later.
It was time to turn attention to the Southern Hemisphere, including South America, Asia, and Africa. In 1959, the WHO embarked on a global initiative to eliminate small pox. Despite some initial efforts, the effort would not take full hold until 1967, when an Intensified Eradication Program was implemented. Higher quality, freeze-dried forms of the vaccine, improved surveillance programs, and massive vaccination campaigns led to elimination of small pox from South America in 1971. Asia would follow 4 years later, and, in 1977, and the world was declared free of small pox after Africa joined the list of continents that had achieved eradication. On May 8, 1980, the World Health Assembly officially declared the world officially free of small pox. The measure exemplifies the power of international health initiatives.
To this day, small pox is the only infection that has successfully been eradicated via vaccination. Although we are on the cusp of achieving eradication for polio, we are not yet there. I’ll come back to those efforts in the next few days.
All this said, I find it amazing and awe-inspiring to consider what it truly possible if the world’s inhabitants all work towards a common goal. It gives me hope in humanity that one day we might find a veritable cure for AIDS, cancer, and Alzheimer’s Disease - as well as a tiny coronavirus that we have all grown to hate.
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