Smallpox

First disease eradicated by vaccination. Variola virus with characteristic pustular rash and high mortality.

Key facts

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Smallpox is the only human infectious disease completely eradicated from nature, yet it remains "immortal" in two maximum-security laboratories (CDC in Atlanta and VECTOR in Russia). The last natural case occurred in Somalia in 1977, but the final death was tragically a Birmingham laboratory accident in 1978 that infected a medical photographer through contaminated ventilation, leading to the laboratory director's suicide from guilt.

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