VS Day

[jeremyp]

I was going to put this in the coronavirus thread, but I think it deserves a thread of its own. VE Day on Friday marked the twentieth anniversary of the declaration of an even more significant victory. On 8th May 1980, the WHO issued this:

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/155528/WHA33_R3_eng.pdf

I quote:

DECLARATION OF GLOBAL ERADICATION OF SMALLPOX

The Thirty-third World Health Assembly, on this the eighth day of May 1980;

Having considered the development and results of the global programme on smallpox eradication initiated by WHO in 1958 and intensified since 1967;

1. DECLARES SOLEMNLY THAT THE WORLD AND ALL ITS PEOPLES HAVE WON FREEDOM FRCM SMALLPOX, WHICH WAS A MOST DEVASTATING DISEASE SWEEPING IN EPIDEMIC FORM THROUGH MANY COUNTRIES SINCE EARLIEST TIMES, LEAVING DEATH, BLINDNESS AND DISFIGUREMENT IN ITS WAKE AND WHICH ONLY A DECADE AGO WAS RAMPANT IN AFRICA, ASIA AND SOUTH AMERICA;

2. EXPRESSES ITS DEEP GRATITUDE TO ALL NATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS WHO CONTRIBUTED TO TEE SUCCESS OF THIS NOBLE AND HISTORIC ENDEAVOUR;

3. CALLS THIS UNPRECEDENTED ACHIEVEMENT IN THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC HEALTH TO THE ATTENTION OF ALL NATIONS, WHICH BY THEIR COLLECTIVE ACTION HAVE FREED MANKIND OF THIS ANCIENT SCOURGE AND, IN SO DOING, HAVE DEMONSTRATED Н Ш NATIONS WORKING TOGETHER IN A COMMON CAUSE MAY FURTHER HUMAN PROGRESS.

This is a far more significant victory than the end of the easier bit of the Second World War.

[SusanDoris]

I was going to put this in the coronavirus thread, but I think it deserves a thread of its own. VE Day on Friday marked the twentieth anniversary of the declaration of an even more significant victory. On 8th May 1980, the WHO issued this:

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/155528/WHA33_R3_eng.pdf

I quote:

This is a far more significant victory than the end of the easier bit of the Second World War.

In that book I read recently, The Serengeti Rules' by Sean Carroll, the epilogue contains a lengthy part on the details of how this was done. A very interesting account. I've just googled to check the name of the Methodist missionary, a doctor who worked out the way to isolate pockets of smallpox and vaccinate those outside the area, but it comes up with other Americans. I think it was a Belgian name. Absolutely brilliant work.

[Gordon]

BBC4 have been re-running Michael Mosley's 'Pain, Pus and Poison: the Search for Modern Medicines, which is excellent, and I'm sure in one of the episodes the eradication of Smallpox features.

It's on iPlayer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01f51s5/episodes/guide

[SteveH]

Jolly good show, but I think comparisons with WW2, none of which was easy, are invidious.

[Nearly Sane]

Obviously the circumstances between smallpox and Covid-19 are very different but it feels that the cooperation that lead to the eradication of smallpox is somewhat missing just now.

[jeremyp]

Jolly good show, but I think comparisons with WW2, none of which was easy, are invidious.

I find it interesting that VE Day got all that coverage (Rightly so) but the declaration of the end of smallpox got absolutely no coverage on the same day.

Smallpox killed more people in the Twentieth century than World War 2, World War 1 and the Spanish flu combined. Its end is surely worth Celebration, particularly in these times.

[Roses]

All children had to be vaccinated with the smallpox vaccine, when I was a child in my home island of Guernsey. I have the scar at the top of my left arm.