The goals of the Rockefeller Foundation and Soper had shifted – whereas the Rockefeller Foundation emphasized vaccination, Soper felt eradication was only possible with the elimination of the vector. Despite this difference, Soper’s efforts in Brazil were lasting and between 1930 and 1949, Brazil spent $26 million on yellow fever work (in addition to the prior $14 million spent by the RF over 28 years). Stepan is skeptical of the effectiveness of such large investments in the fight against a single disease, and feels Brazil [an area with limited public health resources] could have used these funds to fight a wider array of relevant health issues.
Eradication became increasingly vital to international health strategies in the post-WWII period, …show more content…
Unique in nature, smallpox eradication was not born out of a post-WWII innovation, but an older vaccination that could almost completely (95%) reduce the incidence of the disease. Unlike other diseases Soper tried to eradicate, smallpox had no foreign vector, it was an airborne disease transmitted from human to human. “Year after year, Soper reported to the Pan American Health Organization Directing Council on the status of smallpox eradication in the Americas…[he] increasingly had to acknowledge the lack of overall progress towards the desired goal of elimination” (200). However, Soper’s successor as director of PAHO – Abraham Barak Horwitz – placed a new emphasis on social and economic discourse straying from the objective of eradication to the provision of basic public health services. This shifting emphasis on socioeconomic development reflected the global desire to improve the public health standards of poor nations. In conjunction with the PAHO, Donald Henderson of the WHO led the charge in smallpox eradication from 1967 to 1977. Smallpox garnered the necessary political will in part due to many national governments that contributed to the cause mostly because it had become a worldwide effort of progress. Furthermore, new methods of surveillance containment to track the flow and contact group of the disease led to the more efficient vaccination of a smaller percentage of the
Eradication became increasingly vital to international health strategies in the post-WWII period, …show more content…
Unique in nature, smallpox eradication was not born out of a post-WWII innovation, but an older vaccination that could almost completely (95%) reduce the incidence of the disease. Unlike other diseases Soper tried to eradicate, smallpox had no foreign vector, it was an airborne disease transmitted from human to human. “Year after year, Soper reported to the Pan American Health Organization Directing Council on the status of smallpox eradication in the Americas…[he] increasingly had to acknowledge the lack of overall progress towards the desired goal of elimination” (200). However, Soper’s successor as director of PAHO – Abraham Barak Horwitz – placed a new emphasis on social and economic discourse straying from the objective of eradication to the provision of basic public health services. This shifting emphasis on socioeconomic development reflected the global desire to improve the public health standards of poor nations. In conjunction with the PAHO, Donald Henderson of the WHO led the charge in smallpox eradication from 1967 to 1977. Smallpox garnered the necessary political will in part due to many national governments that contributed to the cause mostly because it had become a worldwide effort of progress. Furthermore, new methods of surveillance containment to track the flow and contact group of the disease led to the more efficient vaccination of a smaller percentage of the