World's Last Natural Smallpox Case Recorded in Somalia

Date

1977

Category

Social & demographic

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa (Somalia)

Era

Contemporary

Significance

On 26 October 1977, Somali hospital cook Ali Maow Maalin developed a rash that made him the last person known to contract smallpox through natural transmission, a milestone in one of medicine's greatest triumphs.

Infected during a brief drive escorting two sick children in Merca, Maalin recovered fully, and an aggressive containment campaign vaccinated more than 54,000 people nearby within two weeks, ensuring no further spread. His case capped a decade-long World Health Organization eradication drive built on ring vaccination—finding and isolating cases, then immunising all contacts—that succeeded against a disease which had killed hundreds of millions across history. In April 1978 WHO confirmed no new cases, and in 1980 it formally declared smallpox eradicated, the first and still only human disease ever eliminated. The achievement demonstrated that coordinated global public health could defeat an ancient scourge, and it became the model and inspiration for later campaigns against polio and other diseases.

Empires active in 1977

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE – 1991 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Yugoslavia
  1918 CE – 1992 CE

Related social & demographic events

• The AIDS Epidemic Is First Identified
  1981
• The Great Leap Forward and the Great Chinese Famine
  1958–1962
• The COVID-19 pandemic
  11 March 2020
• Soweto Uprising Galvanises Anti-Apartheid Struggle
  1976
• Rise of Solidarity in Poland
  August–September 1980 (movement to 1989)
• The Ethiopian Famine Shocks the World
  1983–1985

Further reading

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

The wider story

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

Global best-seller on how our species, its populations and societies remade the world.

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