As late as 1960, about five million people a year died of the disease. The eradication of smallpox has been called "perhaps the greatest medical feat of all time." "An ancient, contagious and particularly hideous disease, smallpox kills a third of those infected with it, and Dr. Henderson is one of the few doctors in this country today to have actually seen a case," noted Sheryl Gay Stolberg in an article in the
New York Times, dated November 18, 2001. "The World Health Organization's smallpox eradication program, which Dr. Henderson ran from 1966 to 1977, was, he said, the effort of countless public health workers who toiled under grueling conditions, often living in villages without electricity and running water, in nations torn apart by war. They operated under the principle of 'ring vaccination,' containing outbreaks by vaccinating every patient infected, and everyone around those patients, moving outward in concentric circles until the virus stopped spreading."
Smallpox experts believe the eradication effort, carried out with the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, succeeded because of Henderson's determination. When the health minister of Ethiopia would not cooperate with him, Henderson made his way into the country and got to know the personal physician of the country's emperor, Haile Selassie.
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