Saturday, October 4, 2014

Could WHO model for eradicating smallpox be used for Ebola

It would appear that the current method used to manage the Ebola epidemic is not effective- in all 3 categories, namely  tracing, quarantine and vaccination . Maybe we  should be following more closely the model used by WHO to manage the smallpox epidemic.

Colette Flight in her BBC documentary entitled Smallpox:Eradicating the Scourge  details how the WHO  after passing a resolution in 1959 to undertake global eradication of smallpox began by using intensive tracing, enforced mass quarantine  and extensive vaccination programs,  to eradicate this disease which  in the 20th century alone killed an estimated 300 million.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/smallpox_01.shtml

For example when smallpox was introduced in Wales in 1962 by a traveller from Pakistan in 1966, most of the Wales population over 900,000 individuals were vaccinated. Similarly when a traveller with smallpox visited Kosovo. the entire population of Yugoslavia- some 18 million were vaccinated.
This BBC report details the management of the last natural case of smallpox which occurred  in Somali in 1967 in a 23-year -old hospital cook in Merca who was never successfully vaccinated.After an intensive tracing and vaccinated program, 54,777 people were vaccinated in the next 2 weeks. two years later the team was able to announce that the disease was finally gone.- Except for the  accidental contamination by a medical photographer at the University of Birmingham in September 1977 .This photographer died from the infection but her mother who developed smallpox survived.

As a footnote in 1984 it was agreed that smallpox be kept in only 2 WHO approved laboratories- America and Russia. Although the world Health Assembly has passed resolutions that these stocks be destroyed , this has never been done. Since its now over 3 decades since smallpox has been eradicated that portion of the world population under 30 have no immunity, there is always the threat not only of an accidental infection but  with the more sinister mode that of biological warfare.



No comments:

Post a Comment