Dr. D. A. Henderson
Dr. D. A. Henderson is best known for leading the World Health Organization's Global Smallpox Eradication Campaign. From the time he took that post in 1966 until the disease was declared eradicated from the world as a naturally occurring disease, Dr. Henderson and his team went to the furthest reaches of the world to track down and battle the deadly disease. Currently director of the newly created Office of Public Health Preparedness, which is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Henderson was the founding director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at the John Hopkins School of Public Health.
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"Smallpox spreads from person to person in a continuing chain. If you can break that chain and all of the chains in the country, you stop that disease."
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"We would handle an outbreak today much as we did it in the developing countries…. You isolate the patient, so that he will not infect other people. Then you vaccinate all of those who've been in contact with him. If we can vaccinate within the first three or four days, we can actually prevent those people from developing the disease. The vaccine protects even when it's given after they're exposed. And then, secondly, we'd vaccinate the household contacts of those who've been in contact with the patient, because what we're trying to do is build a ring of protection - of immunity - around the individual, so it won't spread further."
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