Editing Smallpox vaccine (section)

=== Eradication of smallpox ===
[[Image:Poster for vaccination against smallpox.jpg|right|thumb|upright|Smallpox eradication promotional poster]]

{{main|Smallpox#Eradication}}

Smallpox was eradicated by a massive international search for outbreaks, backed up with a vaccination program, starting in 1967. It was organised and co-ordinated by a [[World Health Organization]] (WHO) unit, set up and headed by [[Donald Henderson]]. The last case in the Americas occurred in 1971 (Brazil), south-east Asia (Indonesia) in 1972, and on the Indian subcontinent in 1975 (Bangladesh). After two years of intensive searches, what proved to be the last endemic case anywhere in the world occurred in Somalia, in October 1977.<ref name = "Fenner_1988" />{{rp|526–37}} A Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication chaired by [[Frank Fenner]] examined the evidence from, and visited where necessary, all countries where smallpox had been endemic. In December 1979 they concluded that smallpox had been eradicated; a conclusion endorsed by the WHO General Assembly in May 1980.<ref name = "Fenner_1988" />{{rp|1261–62}} However, even as the disease was being eradicated there still remained stocks of smallpox virus in many laboratories. Accelerated by two cases of smallpox in 1978, one fatal ([[Janet Parker]]), caused by an accidental and unexplained containment breach at a laboratory at the [[University of Birmingham Medical School]], the WHO ensured that known stocks of smallpox virus were either destroyed or moved to safer laboratories. By 1979, only four laboratories were known to have smallpox virus. All English stocks held at [[St Mary's Hospital, London]] were transferred to more secure facilities at [[Porton Down]] and then to the US at the [[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]] (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia in 1982, and all South African stocks were destroyed in 1983. By 1984, the only known stocks were kept at the CDC in the U.S. and the [[State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology]] (VECTOR) in [[Koltsovo, Novosibirsk Oblast|Koltsovo, Russia]].<ref name = "Fenner_1988" />{{rp|1273–76}} These states report that their repositories are for possible anti-[[biological warfare|bioweaponry]] research and insurance if some obscure reservoir of natural smallpox is discovered in the future.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Smallpox > Bioterrorism |url=https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/bioterrorism/public/threat.html |website=U.S. [[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]] (CDC) |access-date=21 May 2022 |date=19 December 2016 |archive-date=19 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220519202433/https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/bioterrorism/public/threat.html |url-status=live }} {{PD-notice}}</ref>