![]() So, when Bangladesh is also declared free from smallpox, hopefully in December next, one of the worst plague-spots on the globe would be free of this pernicious disease. ![]() There have been no smallpox case reports from Bangladesh for over a year now. On April 13, just 10 days before India was declared smallpox-free, Nepal had attained the same status. Fifteen countries of West Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan received the "no-smallpox" certificate in 1976. Yet it must be said to the credit of WHO and hundreds of thousands of workers that within four years of launching the programme South Africa was declared smallpox-free. When the programme was started the disease was still considered endemic in more than 30 countries and imported cases were regularly reported each year in a dozen other countries. It was the early successes of the "isolation and vaccination" concept in some countries in the western hemisphere and the initiative of the USSR that had prompted the World Health Assembly (WHO's controlling body) to aim in 1966 at the goal of total smallpox eradication, and launch a 10-year global campaign in 1967. It is the logical extension of the fact that has now paid off astonishingly well. So, if the patient is isolated during the crucial period, the chain can be broken. The smallpox victim can transmit the disease only from the time his rash appears until the scales drop off - a period of about four weeks. ![]() Since there is no known animal or insect reservoir of the virus (like dog, cat, fox and bat for rabies mosquitoes for malaria and bovine animals for tuberculosis) for the infection to persist in a population, one afflicted person must transmit the virus to a susceptible contact and that contact in turn must transmit it to another in an unbroken chain. ![]() The idea that this scourge can be eliminated from earth stemmed from its peculiar epidemiological characteristics. ![]()
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