Smallpox is eradicated
A disease that killed 300 million people in the twentieth century alone is deliberately destroyed.
- When
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
The WHO declares smallpox eradicated in May 1980 after a campaign of surveillance and ring vaccination rather than mass immunisation — finding each case and vaccinating everyone around it. The last natural case was in Somalia in 1977. It is the only human infectious disease ever eradicated, it was achieved with Soviet and American cooperation at the height of the Cold War, and it remains the strongest single argument for global public health.