In 1980 the World Health Organization announced a momentous achievement, Smallpox had been eradicated from the world.  The outlook of the world was highly optimistic, one of the most terrible diseases that had killed millions would no longer afflict the innocent.  To understand why this effort was hailed with such fanfare one must understand how much damage the disease caused, how hard man strived to combat its fatal symptoms, and the effects of these processes.

Smallpox is a disease that has afflicted mankind for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.  An egyptian mummy was found to have the tell tale scarring of the disease on the face.  The oldest confirmed existence of the disease would be the discovery of a child in Lithuania that contained DNA of the deadly smallpox virus.  The child is dated to the early 1500’s and the DNA is closely related to the strain combated in the 1970’s.  Back in the 1500’s one can imagine the disease left a wake of death in any village unlucky enough to become a host.  With the percentage of fatal cases so high in the modern age, 30% for the most common strain variola major.  The disease most likely had a much higher mortality rate due to the lack of knowledge on how to combat the systems, but also the nutritional and sanitation benefits many enjoyed by the mid 1900’s.

The residents of this time period sought a variety of ways to combat the illness.  More crude methods, more mythology than science, such as red therapy and heat therapy often killed those that would have lived.  The method of these treatments involved subjecting an already fevered person to intense heat.  The belief being that the disease would be killed, or seep out of the victim.  It was later ingenuity that helped rescue many victims from being killed by the doctors trying to cure them.  It was the brilliant minds in the Ottoman empire  that discovered that by taking infected fluid and scratching it into the skin one could prevent a more severe infection of the disease.  Lady Mary Wortley brought this method to the west, violating tradition, but saving lives in the process.  The next innovation came with the work of Jenner who coined the term Vaccine, as well as the use for the cowpox disease as a form of immunity to smallpox.  Cowpox was a distant cousin, but far less deadly and rendered the infected immune to smallpox for a duration of time.

Even with these steps forward the disease was still killing in the thousands across the globe.  Finally, after hundreds of years humanity decided to see how far science could take humanity in the fight against smallpox.  By using a method of rooting out infected individuals ,by countless hours of surveillance, and then giving the vaccine to those within a radius of that individual the disease slowly become extinct when it could no longer find a viable body.

With this success story there has been many other efforts to replicate the success of the program.  The main problem with this is the ever changing geopolitical landscape.  The polio vaccination campaign failed largely due to the cultural divides of east and west.  Rumors of American aid workers sterilizing muslims with the vaccine and other rumors that fostered violence against the movement.  It is this example that reflects the increasing challenges of a culturally diverse world unifying itself.