What I Learned From the World’s Last Smallpox Patient
Declaring victory over a disease is easier than meeting survivors’ needs.
by Céline Gounder
Aug 30, 2022
4 minutes
Rahima Banu, a toddler in rural Bangladesh, was the last person in the world to contract variola major, the deadly form of smallpox, through natural infection. In October 1975, after World Health Organization epidemiologists learned of her infection, health workers vaccinated those around her, putting an end to variola major transmission around the world. The WHO officially declared smallpox eradicated in 1980, and it remains the only human infectious disease ever to have been eradicated. Among infectious-disease doctors like me, Banu, now 48, is famous as a symbol of the power of science and modern medicine. And yet except for that distinction, Banu herself has largely been
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