Podcast series: History of smallpox eradication

The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL has launched a series of podcasts on the 'History of smallpox eradication'. Sanjoy Bhattacharya (UCL Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine) received a grant from the Wellcome Trust to develop the audio project which evolved out of a lecture series held at the centre. Smallpox, an infectious disease caused by two variants of the variola virus, was fully eradicated in 1980. The podcast series begins with Larry Brilliant reflecting on the vaccine science improvements which introduced the possibility of an eradication in 1966-67. Brilliant, currently vice-president of Google Inc., is the author of The Management of Smallpox Eradication in India (1980) and numerous scientific articles on infectious diseases and international health policy. Professor Donald Henderson, the second speaker in the series, was director of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) global smallpox eradication campaign (1966-77) and is a distinguished scholar of public health. In the audio podcast, he traces the collaborative efforts, and the obstacles, that brought the programme to fruition.