Warren, as Director of Public Information at the World Health Organization I played a very tiny role in the eradication of smallpox, publicizing our success in tracking down the last cases in Bangladesh and Ethiopia and celebrating that success as a means of convincing research institutes and governments to dispose of the last stocks of very dangerous live smallpox (A medical photographer in a UK institute died of smallpox when a careless professor dropped a vial on the floor in an adjacent room.) The predominently American public health specialists who spearheaded the campaigns indeed ran a top-down military-like enterprise that ran rough-shod over anyone who disputed their authority, including the weak governments of infected states. The diffference from the other plagues you cite, HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, was that we had an effective vaccine and more importantly, a simple, cheap and effective technology for delivering it, the little bifurcated needle, that required only a health worker with minimal training to scratch the skin of the recipient. No behavioral modification, no changing of long-held cultural practices! Just corral people in ever smaller concentric circles and scratch their skins. It was the ultimate magic bullet. And it worked amazingly well. Would that we had a similar technological wonder to address other plagues. But we don't, with one or two exceptions (polio, goitre). So we must relay on the multi-layered skills of development communication practioners and a host other disciplines.

Charles Morrow
Director of Public Information (1978-82)
World Health Organization, Geneva
Ottawa, Canada