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Dr. William Fudge, the leader of one of humanity’s greatest public health triumphs—the global eradication of smallpox—has died.
Add died on Saturday Atlanta He was 89, according to the Global Health Task Force he co-founded.
Foege, who stands 6 feet 7 inches tall, really stands out in the public health field. He is a cool-headed, calm-mannered doctor with a shrewd knack for defeating infectious diseases.
He served as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the late 1970s and early 1980s and later held other key leadership positions in the campaign to address international health issues.
But before that, his greatest achievement was his work on smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases in human history. Over the centuries, it killed about a third of those infected and left deep scars on the faces of most survivors with pus-filled wounds.
When Fudge was a young doctor, the smallpox vaccination campaign was well established. Indeed, it is no longer visible USA. But infections continue to occur elsewhere, and efforts to eliminate them have stalled.
Serve as a medical missionary Nigeria In the 1960s, Foege and his colleagues developed a “circle containment” strategy to control smallpox outbreaks by identifying each smallpox case and vaccinating everyone who might have come into contact with the patient.
The method relies heavily on quick detective work and was born out of necessity. There simply wasn’t enough vaccine to immunize everyone, Fudge wrote in “House on Fire,” his 2011 book about the smallpox eradication effort.
It worked, and became the key to helping the world eradicate smallpox forever. The last naturally occurring case occurred in somalia 1977. In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated from the earth.
“If you look at simple measures of who has saved the most lives, he’s in the pantheon. Smallpox eradication has prevented hundreds of millions of deaths,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, the former CDC director who frequently consulted with Fudge.
Fudge was born on March 12, 1936. His father was a Lutheran minister, but he became interested in medicine at age 13 while working at a drug store in Colville, Washington.
He received his medical degree from the University of Washington in 1961 and his Master of Public Health from Harvard University in 1965.
He served as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta from 1977 to 1983 and subsequently held other international public health leadership positions, including serving as executive director of the Carter Center and as a senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
2012, President barack obama Fudge was awarded the Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. In 2016, Duke University President Richard Brodhead called Fudge the “Father of Global Health” when he awarded him an honorary degree.
“Bill Fudge is unwavering in his commitment to applying the best available science through strong, purpose-driven alliances to improve the health of people around the world,” Dr. Patrick O’Carroll, CEO of the Global Health Task Force, said in a statement. “We work hard every day on every project to deliver on this commitment.”
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Jack Dura contributed to this report in Bismarck, North Dakota.