Donald Henderson, who has died aged 87, was the American epidemiologist in charge of the decade-long campaign to eradiate smallpox worldwide; the most significant public health initiative of the twentieth century.
The impact of the smallpox virus on the history of human development is as disastrous as it is incontestable. By the mid-eighteenth century the disease was endemic in Europe, with outbreaks affecting up to a third of the total population. For those who became ill, the mortality rate stood at around 30%. Though the arrival of effective vaccination methods precipitated a steep decline in the number of cases throughout Europe and America, attempts to replicate the effects elsewhere had been largely piecemeal until the late 1950s, when Henderson began to develop surveillance programmes for endemic diseases as part of his work with the Communicable Disease Center (CDC), stationed in Atlanta.