R. SMALLPOX

Before the discovery of vaccination in 1796, smallpox was a scourge that swept back and forth over every country of the globe, killing at least one-fourth of its victims and leaving its survivors scarred, pitted, and often blind. Today, it is one of the most easily preventable of all infectious diseases.

However, smallpox is still a serious menace to the life and health of vast segments of the world's population. A single case may result in an outbreak which quickly builds up to epidemic proportions. It is also a constant object of quarantine vigilance because of its ready transmission by international travelers.

Only rarely is smallpox now found in Europe, North America, and Australia. Its endemic area is receding year by year and in the last several years, no cases have been reported from Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. But it has a high endemicity in that area of Asia which stretches from Iraq and Iran through India and southeast Asia (with the exception of Thailand) to Indonesia; and also in certain countries of South America. In 1957, for instance, there were 66,706 cases reported in India and 744 in Ecuador.

There are other large areas in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, including Korea and Japan, where smallpox, though of low endemicity, constitutes a very real continuing threat. For large areas in central Brazil, the U.S.S.R., and parts of Africa, no data are currently available.

B 21/WP/21 Jan. 1958, Campaigns Against Smallpox Publication No. 40, June 1958, Four Year Reports on ns in the Americas