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Global Health Dignitaries Conclude Smallpox Eradication Symposium with Recommendations for Advancing Disease Eradication

August 27, 2010

Over 260 scientists, public health workers, historians and other professionals from 34 countries successfully closed the “Smallpox Eradication after 30 Years: Lessons, Legacies and Innovations” symposium today with a statement of recommendations to the global health community and general public.

In the statement, participants observe that smallpox eradication removed from humanity a disease which killed an estimated 300 million individuals in the twentieth century alone. The global smallpox eradication program also led to several advancements including the expansion of national vaccination programs, use of epidemiological surveillance as a key tool in disease control, and, most significantly, great progress toward the global eradication of polio and Guinea Worm and the elimination of measles and rubella from the Americas.

2010 marks the 30th anniversary of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication officially reporting the elimination of smallpox disease, one of humanity’s greatest health scourges that had plagued civilization since the beginning of recorded history. Smallpox remains the only disease to ever have been eradicated.

To commemorate this historic feat, the Sabin Vaccine Institute (Sabin), Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ) convened the smallpox eradication symposium, on the campus of FIOCRUZ, from August 24-27.

Selected speakers included Drs. Ciro de Quadros and Peter Hotez of Sabin; Joel G. Breman of Fogarty International Center, NIH; Paulo Gadelha, President of FIOCRUZ; D.A. Henderson, who led the WHO’s global smallpox eradication campaign from 1966-1977; Mirta Roses, Director of the Pan American Health Organization; and Tadataka Yamada of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.

For more information visit: http://www.sabin.org/smallpox-symposium. To read the full statement from the International Symposium on Smallpox Eradication click here.