BMJ  2005;331:1261-1262 (26 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7527.1261

Education and debate

Eradicating pathogens

The human story

R Bruce Aylward, coordinator, Global Polio Eradication Initiative1, Maureen Birmingham, coordinator, vaccine assessment and monitoring (VAM) team, Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals1

1 World Health Organization, 20 avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland

Correspondence to: R B Aylward aylwardb@who.int

Eradicating human pathogens is a young science, and there is still much to learn about its role in controlling existing and emerging diseases

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

The allure of eliminating diseases forever through eradicating their causative organisms no doubt tantalised physicians and politicians even before germ theory changed the course of medicine and public health profoundly in the 19th century. Only when William Crawford Gorgas, a major general in the US army and a surgeon, embarked on the ill fated quest to eradicate yellow fever from the jungles of Panama in 1915,1 however, did someone actually try to test the theory. Although Major General Gorgas had to abandon the dream of a world rid of yellow fever, he did leave behind concepts that continue to underpin the practice, and politics, of eradication today.2

First attempts were unsuccessful

Yellow fever was the first of six diseases targeted for eradication during the 20th century. The eradication programme for yaws soon followed, but by 1967 this had also failed.3 The massive effort to eliminate malaria from 1955 to 1969 was not only unsuccessful . . . [Full text of this article]

Success at last

Ongoing eradication efforts

When is eradication a possibility?

A recent success

Conclusions and outlook


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