Global eradication of smallpox declared
- Date
- 8 May 1980 (last natural case 1977)
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Global
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
On 8 May 1980 the World Health Assembly officially declared that smallpox had been eradicated, the first and so far only human disease to be eliminated worldwide through deliberate effort.
Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, had killed and disfigured people for millennia, with hundreds of millions of deaths in the twentieth century alone. An intensified global campaign coordinated by the World Health Organization from 1967 used mass vaccination together with a strategy of surveillance and 'ring' containment around outbreaks. The last known case of naturally occurring smallpox was recorded in Somalia in 1977, and an independent global commission certified eradication in December 1979. The achievement demonstrated that international cooperation could defeat a major infectious disease and became a model for later efforts against polio and other diseases. Stocks of the virus were retained at secure laboratories in the United States and the Soviet Union (later Russia), and the eradication remains a landmark in the history of public health and preventive medicine.
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Empires active in 8 May 1980 (last natural case 1977)
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Yugoslavia1918 CE – 1992 CE
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Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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