FOEGE ON SMALLPOX ERADICATION

Monday, 10th of October 2011

· FOEGE ON SMALLPOX ERADICATION

Book Review

Most of us regard smallpox eradication as an accomplished fact. Not so; it was, as Wellington described the victory at Waterloo, a ‘closely run thing.’ In this delicious new book by William Foege, complementing earlier smallpox accounts by D.A. Henderson and S. Bhattacharya, a junior medical officer persuades the health minister of Bihar State, India, to shelve the (disastrous) decision to reject surveillance and containment in favor of the failed mass vaccination approach.

‘One of the field-workers, a young Indian physician, raised his hand. . . [and] with great deference addressed the minister. He was shaking as he described himself as a poor village man. But, he said, when he was growing up, there were things you could depend on. For example, if a house is on fire in a village, no one wastes time putting water on the other houses, in case the fire spreads. . . .they rush to pour water where it will do the most good – on the burning house.

…’The minister hesitated and stared at the group for some time. And then the unimaginable happened. He changed his mind on the spot.’

--William H. Foege, House on Fire, U. of California Press, 2011

The rest is history, well documented by WHO in The Eradication of Smallpox from India (New Delhi, R N Basu and N A Ward ) and Smallpox and its Eradication (Geneva, F. Fenner et al.). For India buffs, Lawrence Brilliant’s The Management of Smallpox Eradication in India is still good reading.

Isao Arita’s Smallpox Eradication Saga is another insider’s account.

Get Foege’s book and read it, cover to cover. For snippets, go to www.amazon.com and read excerpts and reviews. See also, on this site, http://www.childsurvival.net/?content=com_articles&artid=464