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Sanjoy Bhattacharya - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Re-assessing the Foundations: Worldwide Smallpox Eradication, 1957-67.
    Medical history, 2019
    Co-Authors: Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Carlos Eduardo D´Ávila Pereira Campani
    Abstract:

    An expansive, worldwide Smallpox Eradication programme (SEP) was announced by the World Health Assembly in 1958, leading this decision-making body to instruct the World Health Organization Headquarters in Geneva to work with WHO regional offices to engage and draw in national governments to ensure success. Tabled by the Soviet Union’s representative and passed by a majority vote by member states, the announcement was subject to intense diplomatic negotiations. This led to the formation, expansion and reshaping of an ambitious and complex campaign that cut across continents and countries. This article examines these inter-twining international, regional and national processes, and challenges long-standing historiographical assumptions about the fight against Smallpox only gathering strength from the mid-1960s onwards, after the start of a US-supported programme in western Africa. The evidence presented here suggests a far more complex picture. It shows that although the SEP’s structures grew slowly between 1958 and 1967, a worldwide Eradication programme resulted from international negotiations made possible through gains during this period. Significant progress in limiting the incidence of Smallpox sustained international collaboration, and justified the prolongation and expansion of activities. Indeed, all of this bore diplomatic and legal processes within the World Health Assembly and WHO that acted as the foundation of the so-called intensified phase of the SEP and the multi-faceted activities that led to the certification of Smallpox Eradication in 1980.

  • International health and the limits of its global influence: bhutan and the worldwide Smallpox Eradication programme.
    Medical history, 2013
    Co-Authors: Sanjoy Bhattacharya
    Abstract:

    Histories of the global Smallpox Eradication programme have tended to concentrate on the larger national formations in Africa and Asia. This focus is generally justified by chroniclers by the fact that these locations contributed a major share of the world’s annual tally of variola, which meant that international agencies paid a lot of attention to working with officials in national and local government on anti-Smallpox campaigns in these territories. Such historiographical trends have led to the marginalisation of the histories of Smallpox Eradication programmes in smaller nations, which are presented either in heroic, institutional tropes as peripheral or as being largely shorn of sustained campaigns against the disease. Using a case study of Bhutan, a small Himalayan kingdom sandwiched between India and China, an effort is made to reclaim the historical experiences in small national entities in the worldwide Smallpox Eradication programme. Bhutan’s experience in the 1960s and 1970s allows much more in addition. It provides us with a better understanding of the limited powers of international agencies in areas considered politically sensitive by the governments of powerful nations such as India. The resulting methodological suggestions are of wider historical and historiographical relevance.

  • Smallpox and polio Eradication in India: comparative histories and lessons for contemporary policy
    Ciencia & saude coletiva, 2011
    Co-Authors: Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Rajib Dasgupta
    Abstract:

    This article argues that a detailed examination of factors contributing to the development of complex structures and strategies for Smallpox Eradication in South Asia in the 1970s can provide fruitful indications for the reformulation of the national chapters of the global polio Eradication programme in this region. There is a magnificent archive in the WHO's Geneva offices, which details how Smallpox Eradication outbreaks were located and then contained in cities, small towns and remote rural areas in this region, by teams of international workers working closely with local officials. A systematic assessment of the global Smallpox Eradication efforts indicates parallels between the early stages of the global Smallpox Eradication programme and the present situation of the polio campaign; as we will see here, it can also provide useful indicators for future action in South Asia and beyond.

  • A tale of two global health programs. Smallpox Eradication's lessons for the antipolio campaign in India.
    American journal of public health, 2009
    Co-Authors: Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Rajib Dasgupta
    Abstract:

    India provided one of the most challenging chapters of the worldwide Smallpox Eradication program. The campaign was converted from a project in which a handful of officials tried to impose their ideas on a complex health bureaucracy to one in which its components were constantly adapted to the requirements of a variety of social, political, and economic contexts. This change, achieved mainly through the active participation of workers drawn from local communities in the 1970s, proved to be a momentous policy adaptation that contributed to certification of Smallpox Eradication in 1980. However, this lesson appears to have been largely forgotten by those currently managing the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. We hope to show ways in which contemporary efforts to eliminate polio worldwide might profitably draw on historical information, which can indicate meaningful ways in which institutional adaptability is likely to help counter the political and social challenges being encountered in India.

  • The World Health Organization and global Smallpox Eradication
    Journal of epidemiology and community health, 2008
    Co-Authors: Sanjoy Bhattacharya
    Abstract:

    Background: This article examines the multifaceted structures and complex operations of the World Health Organization and its regional offices; it also reassesses the form and the workings of the global Smallpox Eradication programme with which these bodies were closely linked in the 1960s and 1970s. Methods: Using the case study of South Asia, it seeks to highlight the importance of writing nuanced histories of international health campaigns through an assessment of differences between official rhetoric and practice. Results and conclusion: The article argues that the detailed examination of the implementation of policy in a variety of localities, within and across national borders, allows us to recognise the importance of the agency of field managers and workers. This analytical approach also helps us acknowledge that communities were able to influence the shape and the timing of completion of public health campaigns in myriad ways. This, in turn, can provide useful pointers for the design and management of health programmes in the contemporary world.

Caitlin J Hagen - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Paulo H Verardi - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Allison Titong - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

David L. Heymann - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • human monkeypox after 40 years an unintended consequence of Smallpox Eradication
    Vaccine, 2020
    Co-Authors: Karl Simpson, David L. Heymann, Colin S Brown, Jesper Elsgaard, Paul E. M. Fine, Hubertus Hochrein, Nicole A. Hoff, Andrew Green, John W Edmunds, Chikwe Ihekweazu
    Abstract:

    Abstract Smallpox Eradication, coordinated by the WHO and certified 40 years ago, led to the cessation of routine Smallpox vaccination in most countries. It is estimated that over 70% of the world’s population is no longer protected against Smallpox, and through cross-immunity, to closely related orthopox viruses such as monkeypox. Monkeypox is now a re-emerging disease. Monkeypox is endemic in as yet unconfirmed animal reservoirs in sub-Saharan Africa, while its human epidemiology appears to be changing. Monkeypox in small animals imported from Ghana as exotic pets was at the origin of an outbreak of human monkeypox in the USA in 2003. Travellers infected in Nigeria were at the origin of monkeypox cases in the UK in 2018 and 2019, Israel in 2018 and Singapore in2019. Together with sporadic reports of human infections with other orthopox viruses, these facts invite speculation that emergent or re-emergent human monkeypox might fill the epidemiological niche vacated by Smallpox. An ad-hoc and unofficial group of interested experts met to consider these issues at Chatham House, London in June 2019, in order to review available data and identify monkeypox-related research gaps. Gaps identified by the experts included: • understanding of zoonotic hosts, reservoirs and vectors. • risks associated with transmission. • full description of the clinical spectrum and the natural history of infection including an estimation of the prevalence of monkeypox specific antibodies in humans living in areas of emergence. The experts further agreed on the need for a better understanding of the genomic evolution and changing epidemiology of orthopox viruses, the usefulness of in-field genomic diagnostics, and the best disease control strategies, including the possibility of vaccination with new generation non-replicating Smallpox vaccines and treatment with recently developed antivirals.

  • successful Smallpox Eradication what can we learn to control covid 19
    Journal of Travel Medicine, 2020
    Co-Authors: David L. Heymann, Annelies Wildersmith
    Abstract:

    The public health community needs to learn from history and needs to regain its ability to do shoe-leather public health. If we come together collectively and use the public health tools that we have at hand, we will be successful in containing COVID-19 despite geopolitical tensions, just as we were successful in eradicating Smallpox despite the Cold War at the time.

  • Human monkeypox – After 40 years, an unintended consequence of Smallpox Eradication
    Vaccine, 2020
    Co-Authors: Karl Simpson, David L. Heymann, Colin S Brown, W. John Edmunds, Jesper Elsgaard, Paul E. M. Fine, Hubertus Hochrein, Nicole A. Hoff, Andrew Green, Chikwe Ihekweazu
    Abstract:

    Abstract Smallpox Eradication, coordinated by the WHO and certified 40 years ago, led to the cessation of routine Smallpox vaccination in most countries. It is estimated that over 70% of the world’s population is no longer protected against Smallpox, and through cross-immunity, to closely related orthopox viruses such as monkeypox. Monkeypox is now a re-emerging disease. Monkeypox is endemic in as yet unconfirmed animal reservoirs in sub-Saharan Africa, while its human epidemiology appears to be changing. Monkeypox in small animals imported from Ghana as exotic pets was at the origin of an outbreak of human monkeypox in the USA in 2003. Travellers infected in Nigeria were at the origin of monkeypox cases in the UK in 2018 and 2019, Israel in 2018 and Singapore in2019. Together with sporadic reports of human infections with other orthopox viruses, these facts invite speculation that emergent or re-emergent human monkeypox might fill the epidemiological niche vacated by Smallpox. An ad-hoc and unofficial group of interested experts met to consider these issues at Chatham House, London in June 2019, in order to review available data and identify monkeypox-related research gaps. Gaps identified by the experts included: • understanding of zoonotic hosts, reservoirs and vectors. • risks associated with transmission. • full description of the clinical spectrum and the natural history of infection including an estimation of the prevalence of monkeypox specific antibodies in humans living in areas of emergence. The experts further agreed on the need for a better understanding of the genomic evolution and changing epidemiology of orthopox viruses, the usefulness of in-field genomic diagnostics, and the best disease control strategies, including the possibility of vaccination with new generation non-replicating Smallpox vaccines and treatment with recently developed antivirals.

  • Donald A. Henderson (1928-2016).
    Science (New York N.Y.), 2016
    Co-Authors: David L. Heymann
    Abstract:

    The Smallpox Eradication listserv—which contains the names of many who worked in the Smallpox Eradication program—looks like a page from the Who's Who of public health, including many who became public health leaders during the 20th century. The listserv has been particularly active recently in sharing condolences with the family of Donald A. Henderson and reminiscing about the great man that he was.

  • Surveillance in Eradication and elimination of infectious diseases: a progression through the years.
    Vaccine, 2011
    Co-Authors: David L. Heymann, Larry Brilliant
    Abstract:

    During the years since certification of Smallpox Eradication, the power of infectious disease surveillance has been greatly increased by new biotechnical and electronic technologies. These technologies have transformed the way that surveillance can be used to contribute to public health, and to infectious disease Eradication and elimination. In addition to permitting precise geographical placement of infections by incorporating the most up to date geographical positioning systems, infectious disease surveillance can now also provide more comprehensive understanding of the spread and risks of infections because of genomic sequencing that leads to more meaningful epidemiological analysis. These new technologies have made infectious disease surveillance an even more powerful and timely tool than it was during the period of Smallpox Eradication. Future surveillance will continue to refine these technologies, and adapt newer ones such as rapid point of care diagnostics and hand held communication devices that will lead to more timely and accurate reporting from health facilities. These technologies will also lead to the possibility of direct participation in surveillance by individuals who will be able to report their own disease syndromes, those of their neighbors, or those of domestic and wild animals at the animal/human interface.