Smallpox not only been eradicated but has also slipped and faded away from the public memory/consciousness, people now not realise what we've achieved & conquered, almost completely forgotten now. The round scar on the upper arm is classic for the smallpox vaccination. People in their late 30s &above have it. Smallpox was an incredibly devastating disease in human history, used to sweep through populations periodically,& kill 35% of the infected. And a large % of survivors were left terribly scarred, even blinded. It devastated the Americas,& one of the reasons that the Aztecs as well as Incas were conquered by the second abrahamic barbarians from Europe.
It's greatly remarkable that forty years ago when those were not so modern times,no great technology,electricity or cold chains everywhere,& no means of communications/transport like now; yet the doctors,nurses & health workers went to the globe's remotest part & vaccinated all. We eradicated Smallpox forty years ago yet struggle today with TB & malaria which even not need vaccination but hygiene & sanitation, alas! PraNAma/salute to all those scientists, doctors,nurses,technicians, health workers and even the bureaucrats & politicians involved,esp the WHO,in the programme to eradicate one of the greatest scourges of humanity: http://www.who.int/features/2010/smallpox/en/ .
But many millennia before the West even "discovered" vaccination, we Hindus were already doing it: http://www.indianscience.org/dyk/t_dy_Q14.shtml .Smallpox vaccination was practiced widespread by Hindus in the Indian subcontinent well into ~1800s. Brits banned it as inhuman,rest is history. This banning in colonial India by Brits of the vaccination of smallpox as "inhuman & barbaric" wreaked havoc on us for ~150 years. The British ban on smallpox-vaccination by Hindus led to not only mortality & morbidity in terms of multi-millions of people but also it+ led to the loss of knowledge mastered by Hindus over millennia against this lethal disease. Now mlEchChas get the credit for eradication!
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