Smallpox: Eradicating the Scourge

Page 3 of 6

• 1. The scourge of the world
• 2. Edward Jenner's breakthrough
• 3. Draconian measures in Yugoslavia
• 4. Containment
• 5. A new threat?
• 6. Find out more
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Draconian measures in Yugoslavia

In Wales in 1962 a traveller from Pakistan seeded a smallpox outbreak in the Rhondda. Twenty-five people contracted smallpox, and six of them died, including a nine-month-old baby. As the epidemic grew, so did the public clamour for vaccination, and 900,000 people were eventually vaccinated in South Wales.

One of the last major European outbreaks was in Yugoslavia in 1972. Smallpox was not diagnosed until the epidemic was well under way, and Tito's Communist government took draconian measures to bring the outbreak under control. Despite this, there were still 175 cases and 35 deaths. A Muslim pilgrim had returned from Mecca to his village in Kosovo via Iraq, where there were cases of smallpox, and spread the disease to friends and relatives. A man called Ljatif Muzza in nearby Djakovica also became infected.

Muzza fell ill and because of the seriousness of his condition was treated in a series of hospitals, ending up in Belgrade on 10th March. Nurse Dusanka Stupar was on duty that night with her colleague Dusica Spasic. Muzza had been misdiagnosed as suffering from a bad reaction to penicillin. In fact he had contracted the most virulent and highly contagious form of smallpox - hemorrhagic - in which the patient bleeds to death before developing pustules. He died later that night.

'It was a place of waiting for life or death... for the next 15 days we will live together and wait to see whose turn it is next...'

The morning after Muzza's death Dusanka came down with measles and was forced to take a few weeks off work. During her absence the first smallpox cases appeared in Belgrade. Incredibly Muzza infected 38 people, eight of whom died. The first Dusanka knew about the epidemic was when health officials turned up at her home on 23rd March to take her in to quarantine. A few days later she discovered that her friend, Dusica, had already died of the disease. Enforced mass quarantine was instigated to stop the virus in its tracks. Dusanka recorded her experience of it in a diary. She was kept in a hotel guarded by armed police. It was 'a place of waiting for life or death... from today for the next 15 days we will live together and wait to see whose turn it is next.' Dusanka smuggled the diary out in her underwear; it was forbidden to take possessions out of quarantine for fear of infection.

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Published: 2002-02-01