As scientists scramble for a COVID-19 cure and vaccine, the world marks on Friday a pertinent anniversary: humanity’s only true triumph over an infectious disease with its eradication of smallpox four decades ago. | AFP
Smallpox is thought to have existed for thousands of years, with the earliest documented evidence of the vesicular skin lesions believed to be caused by the disease discovered on the mummy of Egyptian pharaoh Ramses V.
This file photo taken in January 1943 shows US Office of War Information employees receiving free inoculations against smallpox, as well as diptheria and typhoid, in Washington, DC. AFP“We can learn a lot from smallpox for the COVID response,” she told AFP. Experts stress that contact-tracing will be of vital importance until a vaccine against the new virus is developed and available — something expected to take at least a year.
Before the emergence of the vaccine, people engaged in inoculation to immunise against smallpox, inserting powdered smallpox scabs or fluid from a patient into superficial scratches made in the skin, in the hope it would produce a mild but protective infection. After a decade-long major push, the last known naturally occurring case of smallpox was seen in Somalia in 1977.
Washington and Moscow have long maintained the importance of retaining the samples for research purposes.
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