Sabin Vaccine Institute, Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and Fundação Oswaldo Cruz convened Smallpox Eradication after 30 Years: Lessons, Legacies and Innovations” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 24 August 2010. The meeting involved “global health dignitaries from 33 countries to share global health lessons, legacies and innovations post smallpox eradication.” 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication officially reporting the elimination of smallpox disease. Smallpox remains the only disease to ever have been eradicated.
Dr. Mirta Roses, Director of the Pan American Health Organization, commented, “The eradication of smallpox has rightly been called one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Not only was it an important public health milestone, but it also gave rise to the founding of the Expanded Program on Immunization, which has been instrumental in saving the lives of millions of children around the world. As we have advanced with polio eradication in the Americas, now a global goal, and the elimination of measles and rubella, the Americas are forging a new future in control of vaccine-preventable diseases that sets examples for the rest of the world. We honor the heroes of smallpox eradication and the millions of health workers who toil selflessly every day to bring life-saving vaccines to the remotest corners of the earth, and we urge continued government, NGO, and private sector support for the goals of universal immunization.”
Statement from the International Symposium on Smallpox Eradication
After 30 Years: Lessons, Legacies and Innovations
We, the 260 scientists, public health workers, historians and other professionals from 34 countries who participated in the August 24‐27, 2010 Smallpox Eradication Symposium at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, offer the following observations on smallpox eradication:
– First, smallpox eradication removed from the human population a virus that killed an estimated 300 million people in the twentieth century.
– Second, after 1980 smallpox vaccination was stopped saving the great costs of vaccination programs and eliminating the sometimes severe complications of smallpox vaccination.
– Third, the smallpox eradication program inspired a generation of public health practitioners and several major programs such as:
— A wider program of vaccination (The Expanded Program on Immunizations) that has helped achieve high levels of immunization around the world preventing large numbers of deaths of children and adults.
—- Wide-spread use of epidemiological surveillance as a key tool in disease control.
—- Programs that have made great progress toward the global eradication of polio and Guinea Worm and the elimination of measles and rubella from the Americas.
– Fourth, it demonstrated that international cooperation and solidarity can contribute to major public health improvements around the world.
– Finally, since the end of smallpox vaccination an increasing proportion of the population of the world is susceptible to smallpox. Given the current limited supplies of smallpox vaccine, release of smallpox into the environment could cause a catastrophic global epidemic. Further, smallpox virus is known to be held by only two laboratories in the world as authorized by WHO. Although these two laboratories maintain extensive precautions against release of the virus, no containment system is risk-free. In addition, it cannot be ascertained that there are no unauthorized stores of smallpox virus.
More than 15 years have elapsed since the World Health Assembly agreed to postpone the destruction of the smallpox virus. Therefore, in the interest of global security, consideration should now be given to early destruction of existing laboratory stocks of smallpox virus when on-going WHO-sanctioned research is completed on improved vaccines and diagnostics, effective anti-virals, and reliable animal model.
Finally, possession or deployment of the smallpox virus outside the WHO-sanctioned facilities should be designated a crime against humanity.
vaccines and global health :: ethics and policy 