In the modern world, it is easy to be newly concerned about the World Health Organisation. They were the last to declare COVID-19 a pandemic, they said not to blame China, and stood by while China bullied them into staying silence while the communist dictatorship tried to blame COVID-19 on American frozen food, and not their sloppy coronavirus lab next to the Wuhan wet market, where employees from the lab had already been caught selling experimental animals.

It's not new. Once upon time, they denied that Smallpox could be eliminated.

Two men, and the United States government, not only believed WHO wrong, they set out to unilaterally end it. WHO didn't want to be involved because they didn't have the best scientists even then, they had the ones who were chosen for cultural reasons, and they did not think the surveillance-containment strategy of Dr. Bill Foege would succeed. World Health Organisation Director-General Marcolino Gomes Candau feared the optics if it failed. His UN group were already under fire for over-promising and under-delivering on malaria, and banning DDT over the objections of scientists.

The Carter administration decided to go ahead and eliminate Smallpox anyway, and footed the entire bill. At a time when WHO only spent $2.7 million on it.


(L) Dr. D.A. Henderson and (R) Dr. Bill Foege saved hundreds of millions of lives using a surveillance–containment strategy for smallpox that the UN said was flawed.

The Carter administration chose Henderson to run it (he passed away in 2016) but the surveillance–containment strategy, the mathematical premise of creating concentric rings to target based on how disease spreads, was Foege. He became Chief of the CDC Smallpox Eradication Program and was appointed director of the CDC in 1977.

Naturally, two years after these American scientists really ended it, WHO declared it ended, and American magazine covers also gave them the credit. 



But Foege did not care much about that. He could be modest because he had the rest of us to sing his praises.

We weren't close friends, we were just email correspondents because he was supportive of our work. But I am proud to say I knew him.

Rest in peace, sir.