A Physician Travels to South Asia Seeking Enduring Lessons From the Eradication of Smallpox

Smallpox was certified eradicated in 1980, but I first learned about the disease’s twisty, storied history in 1996 while interning at the World Health Organization. As a college student in the 1990s, I was fascinated by the sheer magnitude of what it took to wipe a human disease from the earth for the first time.

Over the years, I’ve turned to that history over and over, looking for inspiration and direction on how to be more ambitious when confronting public health threats of my day.

In the late 1990s, I had the opportunity to meet some of the health care professionals and other eradication campaign workers who helped stop…