Forty and Twenty Years Ago and Now--Virus Elimination Successes and New Challenges

Forty years ago,smallpox was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization(WHO).As D.A.Henderson,Director of the Smallpox Eradication Programme at the WHO quoted from the 33^(rd) World Health Assembly(1980)(1),“...the world and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox...a most devastating disease...since earliest time,leaving death,blindness,and disfigurement in its wake and which only a decade ago was rampant in Africa,Asia and South America.”