The world has managed to defeat only one virus - a deadly disease that has raged for thousands of years

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The world has managed to defeat only one virus - a deadly disease that has raged for thousands of years
The world has managed to defeat only one virus - a deadly disease that has raged for thousands of years
Anonim

Humanity has managed to completely eradicate only one disease caused by the virus. But this achievement was priceless: the disease has raged since ancient times, and it was called the killer of civilizations. And the work to eradicate it has led to a number of discoveries related to immunity and vaccination, writes Nettavisen.

“A state of emergency was immediately declared throughout Yugoslavia. Restrictions were imposed with an iron hand and ruthless coercion. No one was allowed to leave the house. Movement by all types of transport was prohibited, roads and borders were closed, any activity involving crowds of people was punished."

In 2018, this text by Professor Reidun Sirevåg was likely to shock Aftenposten readers. But two years later, our own Minister of Health, Bent Høie, arranged something similar for us.

However, this "control shot in the head", which the dictator Tito inflicted on a contagion that suddenly appeared in Europe in 1973, marked the final deliverance of mankind from one of the most terrible diseases in history.

Smallpox was completely eradicated in the 1960s and 1970s. This is the only human disease that has been eradicated. With the coronavirus, we probably can not count on this.

This unique achievement is also linked to the history of vaccines. The word "vaccine" comes from the name of the virus used to vaccinate against smallpox: Vaccinia.

Killer of civilizations

Historical sources indicate that smallpox raged in ancient Egypt. It is believed to have claimed hundreds of millions of lives. And even became the reason for the disappearance of entire civilizations.

It is believed that the Aztecs and Incas became extinct precisely because of the smallpox virus that the Europeans brought to America. In the 18th century, they even tried to use it as a biological weapon.

“If a person was not treated at all, the death rate from smallpox exceeded 30%. Most of all children died. And many of the survivors suffered from complications, such as blindness and infertility. And absolutely everyone who got sick was disfigured with terrible scars,”says Norsk helseinformatikk.

For comparison: mortality from covid-19 among children is supposedly 0.5-1%, and children hardly get sick with it.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health reports that the situation was particularly dire in 1741, when 700 children died in Bergen alone. Meanwhile, the population of the city was then about 20 thousand people. Almost twice as many people died in the city that year than were born.

But it was far from only a childhood illness. Among her victims are such famous personalities as Mozart, Beethoven, Queen Elizabeth I, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Severe disease

The disease occurred due to the variola virus, which was spread by airborne droplets, through contact with rashes, and often through clothing.

The following symptoms occurred 10-14 days after infection.

The illness began with headache, high fever, back and upper abdominal pain, vomiting, and tremors that lasted for several days. When the rash appeared, the temperature often dropped slightly, and the person felt better for a while. At first, the rash manifested itself as red patches on the tongue and mouth. They quickly turned into abscesses that burst, so that large amounts of the virus entered the mouth and throat. Following these wounds, a rash appeared on the skin: first on the face, and then transferred to the arms and legs. The rash usually covered the entire body in 24 hours. By the fourth day, the bubbles were filling with a thick liquid. The fever rose again, which lasted until the rash and wounds crusted.

An extremely important discovery

In the old days, people knew little about disease, but it was almost certainly known that if a person survived smallpox, he would never get sick again.

It was already known about immunity.

In some parts of the world, simple ways have been devised to cause mild illness in people. In China, dried crusts from rashes and wounds of a smallpox patient were placed in the nose; in other regions, the liquid from the rashes was rubbed under the scratched skin. The goal was to make the person get sick, but easily.

The latter method was called variolation, and it became the forerunner of vaccination. Gradually, this technique has become widespread throughout the world. It was not safe, but, as a rule, it was still considered preferable to the disease itself.

The effectiveness was related to the way the virus attacked the body. The skin infection was less concentrated than the airborne infection that went straight to the lungs.

The word "variolation" itself comes from the Latin name for variola virus - variola.

Breakthrough

But the real breakthrough in this area was made at the end of the 18th century by the British physician Edward Jenner. As a child, he learned that milkmaids do not contract smallpox, because they often have already had a much milder form of the disease called vaccinia.

This is the way he decided to go. After studying, he began to research. In 1776, he inoculated an eight-year-old boy with cowpox, and he tolerated it easily. Two months later, Jenner tried to infect the boy with liquid from a rash from a patient with smallpox, but the boy did not get sick. Then the doctor considered the method scientifically proven.

He called his method "vaccination" - from the Latin name for the vaccinia vaccinia virus.

The method was quickly mastered. In Norway, the first vaccination was carried out in 1803. In 1810, all adolescents were required to be vaccinated. To obtain permission for confirmation, wedding or school attendance, a person was required to present a certificate of vaccination.

Since 1909, there have been no major outbreaks of this infection in the country, according to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Smallpox vaccination was compulsory until 1976. There was controversy around this decision, because one or two children died every year as a result of complications after vaccination.

It took a while to eradicate the disease worldwide

Although after the introduction of compulsory vaccination in Norway, smallpox was practically not sick, it cannot be said that the virus instantly became a thing of the past around the world.

In 1958, at a meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO), the USSR proposed trying to completely eradicate smallpox. At that time, there were about 50 million cases of infection in the world every year.

Previously, no one has ever eradicated a virus completely - it is simply impossible to get rid of most of them. But since smallpox was only transmitted from person to person, it was technically feasible. But the coronavirus, plague and flu survive perfectly well outside the human body, so they can always find a refuge in the wild.

In Europe, the infection practically did not appear. But the infection suddenly returned to Yugoslavia after a pilgrim in 1973 went to Iraq. It was then that Tito struck her with an iron fist. A large-scale compulsory vaccination was carried out in the country, during which 20 million people were vaccinated with the help of WHO in two months.

In the mid-1970s, the disease was already widespread only in eastern Africa, where famine, civil wars and refugee flows made vaccination work difficult. But once a program of active monitoring of the situation showed that since October 26, 1977, not a single case of infection has been recorded there.

In May 1980, the WHO announced that the smallpox virus had been eradicated.

Still exists in laboratories

Although the virus formally stopped spreading in October 1977, one scientist died from it in 1978. He probably contracted a virus that was cultivated for research purposes at the University of Birmingham.

Subsequently, all available samples in the world were destroyed or transferred to WHO.

Now this virus can be found only in the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention and in a similar organization in Russia.

There was an accident in the Russian laboratory in 2019, but apparently it happened some distance from the place where the virus samples were stored.

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