USPHS SMALLPOX ERADICATION CAMPAIGN

Highly infectious and with a mortality rate over thirty percent, smallpox had begun to ravage Europe from the early Sixteenth Century and was a leading cause of death by the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Colonists from England brought the disease with them to America, where it was particularly devastating to the Native-American population.

But a technique called inoculation—using scabs and pustules from smallpox sufferers to intentionally infect people with a typically weaker version of the deadly virus—had been in use in China since the tenth century and had spread westward to India and Turkey. The practice was introduced in England by Lady Mary Montagu, wife of Great Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, in 1721, and quickly spread to America because of its efficacy.

But inoculation carried the risk that the recipient would fall victim to smallpox and could also spread the disease, which led renowned physician Edward Jenner to begin research to find a less risky way prevent the disease. Noting that milkmaid who’d had cowpox, a disease similar to smallpox but much less lethal, were immune to smallpox, he used the pus from cowpox blisters to create the world’s first vaccine.

The smallpox vaccine dramatically reduced the occurrence of the disease in North America and Europe, two areas where the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the disease had been eradicated by the early 1950s. But it was still a major scourge in Africa, Asia, and South America, and in 1959 the WHO launched an initiative to completely eradicate the disease from the globe.

But the WHO’s efforts were largely ineffectual until 1966, when a team dubbed the Smallpox Eradication Unit was established under the leadership of Donald A. Henderson. A member of the United States Public Health Service, Henderson established and directed the Smallpox Surveillance Unit, a group of dedicated volunteers who use “surveillance containment”—a combination of rapid reporting and immediate and widespread vaccinations in response to new occurrences of the disease. Thanks in part to Henderson’s strategy (derived in no small part from United States Public Health Service disease-containment practices and techniques), the last naturally occurring case of smallpox was reported in October, 1977. Today, the only places the smallpox virus can be found are in research facilities in the United States and Russia.

The Smallpox Eradication Campaign Ribbon was established to honor those members of the Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service who worked so diligently in the effort to end the blight of smallpox. To qualify for the ribbon, an USPHS officer must have served at least ninety days (cumulative) in either the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Bureau of Smallpox Eradication (or its Smallpox laboratory), with the WHO’s Smallpox Eradication Program, or in a temporary duty assignment abroad as part of smallpox recognition and response efforts. The service must have taken place between January 1, 1966 and October 26, 1977—the date of the last known case of smallpox.

This award is issued only as a ribbon.