[Box/Picture on page 8]

Triumphs Over Smallpox and Polio

At the end of October 1977, the World Health Organization (WHO) tracked down the last-known naturally occurring case of smallpox. Ali Maow Maalin, a hospital cook who lived in Somalia, did not get a severe attack of the disease, and he was well again within a few weeks. All people in contact with him were vaccinated.

For two long years, the doctors waited anxiously. A $1,000 reward was offered to anyone who could report another confirmed “active smallpox case.” Nobody successfully claimed the reward, and on May 8, 1980, WHO formally announced that “the World and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox.” Just a decade earlier, smallpox was causing the death of about two million people a year. For the first time in history, a major infectious disease had been eliminated.a