Donald A Henderson: obituary in The Lancet

Epidemiologist credited with eradicating smallpox. Born on Sept 7, 1928, in Lakewood, OH, USA, he died of complications from a broken hip on Aug 19, 2016, in Towson, MD, USA, aged 87 years.

When Donald “D A” Henderson took the helm of WHO’s global campaign to end smallpox in 1966, he faced scepticism from the public health community that the disease affecting at least 10 million people in more than 50 countries at the time could be eradicated. Over the next 11 years, thousands of health workers vaccinated people in smallpox hotspots in Africa, Brazil, and South Asia using a newly developed freeze-dried vaccine administered via a jet gun that injected it further into the skin. But rather than vaccinate large swaths of the population, they adopted a strategy developed by epidemiologist William Foege to identify and isolate people with the disease and vaccinate everyone in close proximity, and in turn everyone in contact with those people. The last case of smallpox was recorded in Somalia in 1977 and 3 years later WHO declared it eradicated.