On this day in 1979, smallpox was confirmed to have been eradicated by a group of scientists working for the World Health Organization. Five months later, the World Health Assembly (the decision-making body of the WHO) officially declared the disease eliminated.
Smallpox is extremely contagious and lingers in the air after a sick person leaves, making it much easier to encounter and become infected. It plagued humans for over 3,000 years and in the 20th century alone killed 300 million to 500 million people.
Vaccinations for the disease were first made available in the U.S. in 1813. But on a global basis, smallpox persisted in part because of the increasing frequency of travel through the 1900s, especially in poorer countries.
In 1959, the WHO started a global push to eliminate smallpox through coordinating the work of thousands of public health and medical professionals and inoculating those who may have been in contact with an infected person. It took years for the program to ramp up, but the disease was finally stamped out two decades later.
There are still smallpox virus strains stored in two facilities, one in Atlanta, Ga., and the other in Siberia.
You can read more about the history of the global effort to eliminate smallpox on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
