Some of the obstacles of surrounding vaccination in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) made eradication of smallpox in the country seem unlikely. These obstacles included a lack of infrastructure/travel, an uncooperative government, and an inability to conduct active surveillance on the amount of individuals vaccinate as well as an issue with detecting cases of smallpox. Many of these issues are akin to those faced by the effort to keep the DRC free of polio.1 In 2017 two confirmed cases vaccine-derived polio type 2 virus appeared in the DRC. Thus, there are many issues in that ring vaccination is not being effectively achieved and maintained throughout the DRC. This lack of vaccination coverage may be due similar issues that affected
