DESTRUCTION OF SMALLPOX VIRUS BY 1999 RECOMMENDED BY EXECUTIVE BOARD OF WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
Press Release
H/2894
DESTRUCTION OF SMALLPOX VIRUS BY 1999 RECOMMENDED BY EXECUTIVE BOARD OF WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
19960125 GENEVA, 25 January (WHO) -- The ninety-seventh session of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday decided to recommend the destruction of the remaining stocks of the smallpox (variola) virus, currently held in the Russian Federation and the United States, by 30 June 1999.It made that recommendation in a resolution that it would submit to the forty-ninth session of the World Health Assembly in May. In taking that decision, the Board followed the 1994 recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on Orthopoxvirus Infections that the remaining stocks of variola virus should be destroyed. The Ad Hoc Committee also recommended that 500,000 doses of smallpox vaccine should be kept by the WHO and that the smallpox vaccine seed virus (vaccinia virus strain Lister Elstree) should be maintained.
The text of the resolution submitted for adoption by the Assembly notes that on 8 May 1980 the thirty-third World Health Assembly declared the global eradication of smallpox and that the stock of variola virus has since been reduced and restricted to the WHO Collaborating Centre on smallpox and other poxvirus infections designated at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, United States, and the Russian State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology, Koltsovo, Novosibirsk Region, Russian Federation.
It recommends that the remaining stocks of variola virus, including all whitepox viruses, clinical specimens and all other materials containing infectious variola virus and viral genomic DNA be destroyed on 30 June 1999.
The eradication of smallpox is among the greatest public health achievements of all time. This success resulted from an unprecedented international effort coordinated by the WHO and was recognized by the thirty- third World Health Assembly which declared on 8 May 1980 the global eradication of smallpox. The last known natural case of smallpox was detected in Somalia in October 1977.
Less than 30 years ago, smallpox was endemic in 31 countries. At that time, between 10 and 15 million people were stricken with the disease each year; of these, nearly 2 million died and millions of survivors were
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disfigured or blinded for life. Smallpox was the first disease ever to be eradicated. The eradication of smallpox cost approximately $313 million over 10 years, an investment which has been paid back many times over since then in savings on vaccines and medical care and the suspension of international surveillance activities.
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