CHAPTER 1

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SMALLPOXCHAPTER 1 eradicating an ancient scourgeEastern Nigeria, December 1966. !e message came through on the radio a crackly transmission car-rying news of a smallpox outbreak in the bush. !e missionaries had set up a ham radio network covering parts of the Ogoja region of eastern Nigeria where they were working in support of the country s national smallpox campaign. Every day at 7 pm they tuned in to share news and check that none of them had fallen ill. !e report ended with a request for Dr William Foege to come out to the village and take a look. Foege had his doubts. He had been working in Nigeria as a medical missionary long enough to know that chickenpox was sometimes mistaken for the far more serious disease. However, he knew that only around 35% of the popula-tion was supposed to have been vaccinated against smallpox in that region.

5 Smallpox When WHO was founded In 1948, when the World Health Organization (WHO) came into being, the smallpox virus was infecting about 50 …

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