2
9
67
-
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/4dc6ef937719dd6fa6d83fd77f250dc9.jpg
c4add24234d15f08afd1581c7c14dd6e
Omeka Image File
The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files.
Bit Depth
8
Channels
3
Height
178
Width
184
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/683280d25992d65aedc92146052f9d32.pdf
8cb9282c57c5ecde06ed0cd89986795c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smallpox
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="landing">
<p>Smallpox disease was declared eradicated in 1980, the result of a collaborative global campaign. To date, it is the only disease affecting humans to be eradicated from the world. Global eradication of smallpox ranks among the great achievements of humankind. Gone, through determined human effort, is a disease which has brought death to millions, frequently altering the course of history, and traveling through the centuries to every part of the world. </p>
<p>The vital contributions made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are highlighted. Official government correspondence, meeting transcripts, policy statements, surveillance reports and mortality statistics tell a part of that story. Adding depth to these traditional archives are the personal stories of the public health pioneers who worked tirelessly on the frontlines of the smallpox eradication campaign.</p>
<p>The links above connect you to a database of oral histories, photographs, documents, and other media.</p>
<p>Use of this information is free, but please see <strong>“About this Site”</strong> for guidance on how to acknowledge the sources of the information used</p>
</div>
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:04:45
Player
html for embedded player to stream video content
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/310210147%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-71EQF&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="166"></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
FOSTER, STANLEY O.
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Stanley O. Foster, EIS Class of 1962 provides descriptions of the working
relationships he had with other people and organizations during the smallpox
eradication efforts in Africa and Asia.
Interviewed by Karen Torghele
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The David J. Sencer CDC Museum at the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30333
www.cdc.gov/museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
November 2, 2011
-
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/d6d8f6e0a7baee2ec152e3d916cdd917.jpg
9c82c9143b5028c1060873b6bb60a25f
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/14c20f3205f97b3b2a9a23136d88498e.pdf
271551e47c57078b6293465233fdef7c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smallpox
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="landing">
<p>Smallpox disease was declared eradicated in 1980, the result of a collaborative global campaign. To date, it is the only disease affecting humans to be eradicated from the world. Global eradication of smallpox ranks among the great achievements of humankind. Gone, through determined human effort, is a disease which has brought death to millions, frequently altering the course of history, and traveling through the centuries to every part of the world. </p>
<p>The vital contributions made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are highlighted. Official government correspondence, meeting transcripts, policy statements, surveillance reports and mortality statistics tell a part of that story. Adding depth to these traditional archives are the personal stories of the public health pioneers who worked tirelessly on the frontlines of the smallpox eradication campaign.</p>
<p>The links above connect you to a database of oral histories, photographs, documents, and other media.</p>
<p>Use of this information is free, but please see <strong>“About this Site”</strong> for guidance on how to acknowledge the sources of the information used</p>
</div>
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound.
<pre><strong> Interview Transcript </strong>
INTERVIEW
Audio File: Vince Radke Audio File
Transcribed: January 29, 2009
Interviewer: I'm Dave Sensor and I'm interviewing Vince Radke. Vince
is an employee of CDC. It's April 1st, 2008. We're interviewing at
CDC in the afternoon and Vince realizes that he's being photographed
and recorded and he's signed the permit. First Vince in ten minutes
or less...
Interviewee: Okay.
Interviewer: ...tell me about your early years.
Interviewee: Okay, Dr. Sensor. Early years born and raised in Detroit,
Michigan. Did my undergraduate at Michigan State University in
biology and...
Interviewer: Too bad.
Interviewee: Too - yeah I know. Well, you know, these graduates from
Michigan, you know. I always got to put up with them. But then after
that - well while I was at Michigan State I put an application into
the peace corps and about a year later I get a call from a gentleman
and he said, "Vince would you come to Philadelphia? We'd like to tell
you a little bit about Ethiopia and a little bit about smallpox." And
I said, "Oh that would be great." Well the next thing I did, made a
beeline for the library and got all the books I could on Ethiopia and
tried to find out what smallpox was. To make a long story short, came
down to CDC in nineteen seventy. They were having a training program
for two weeks for the peace corps volunteers who were going to be
going over to Ethiopia. So, the best, the best by far training I have
ever had in my entire life was those two weeks here at CDC in
smallpox. I had some great, great instructors. D.A. Henderson was
one of them, Bill Fergie and others. It was just, just a fantastic
time. Right after that then we flew off to Ethiopia and for the next
three and a half years I worked in the smallpox eradication program
there in Kaffa Province.
Interviewer: What had you been doing before Ethiopia and after college?
Interviewee: Well, right - I came in right in out of college. That
summer is when I went to - I had just graduated from Michigan State.
That was the summer of nineteen seventy and the - that July we were in
Philadelphia for the first interview and then the summer I spent
visiting some friends in Michigan. And then a call came in September
to come down for the training at CDC and this was September/October of
nineteen seventy. And then we were here for two weeks for that
training in smallpox eradication and then we hoped the plane to New
York and changed planes there and on our way to Ethiopia. And for the
next three and a half years that's what I did. The two, it was only a
two year original commitment but we were - I enjoyed the work. It was
tough but I enjoyed the work so they asked me if I would stay for
another year and I said yeah I'll stay for another year and then
stayed for six months beyond that. And then came back and then I knew
that I needed to get some more education.
So I started at the University of Pittsburgh to get my masters degree
in public health and while there I was contacted by D.A. Henderson and
he said, "Vince we could use some help in Bangladesh for a short
while." And I said, "D.A. I'd love to come," and so made arrangements
and for six months I worked in the smallpox eradication in Bangladesh.
Interviewer: In Ethiopia what were your main responsibilities?
Interviewee: In Ethiopia we, my partner Mark Strosberg and I -- also a
peace corps volunteer -- were assigned to Kaffa Province. That's in
the southwestern part of Ethiopia and we were there to find cases of
smallpox and vaccinate. We were told originally when we saw the
reports that the number of cases of smallpox in Ethiopia, couple of
hundred a year. I think the year before we arrived they reported like
seven hundred cases. Dr. Sensor I think within the first couple of
weeks we were there we had over a thousand cases of smallpox. We
would contact, go to schools, go to market areas in Kaffa Province and
we'd ask, show pictures of small pox and we would be inundated with
people saying in their village or in their areas there was smallpox.
And so we picked a couple of villages and I went one way and Mark went
the other way. And so we were looking for cases of smallpox,
recording them, we'd record each of the cases of smallpox, we'd record
the number of people that we would vaccinate, names of the villages
and then from there we would get reports that would take us on to the
next village and every - inevitably we found some smallpox. So for
the next about three years I did that.
Interviewer: Was the work environment in Ethiopia a good one?
Interviewee: It was good. We were - we had great cooperation all along
the line from the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia, also the World
Health Organization. Our two smallpox people there from WHO were Ciro
de Quadros, Dr. Ciro de Quadros and Dr. Kurt Weithaler. They led the
program. You were - I was assigned to the Ministry of Health and you
had an official government car and that helped very much. We went out
to the Provinces and met with the governor and the local officials.
They gave us good cooperation down there. Sometimes they would supply
us with a guide and a translator even though they trained the peace
corps in the local language in Ethiopia or the government language
which was Amharic. In Ethiopia you have seventy different languages
and two hundred dialects. So each time you would go cross another
mountain range or move into another area you would be in a totally
different language and so we had to have a translator with us and a
guide. So the government officials were very, very helpful in doing
that.
Interviewer: Were you married when you were there?
Interviewee: No I wasn't. I didn't get married until I finished in
Bangladesh. Came back from Bangladesh in the end of seventy six and
then met my wife at the University of Pittsburgh and then got married
in August of seventy seven and then shortly after that went to Kenya
to work on the smallpox eradication program. That was the last stages
where we were trying to document that there were zero cases in Kenya.
Interviewer: While you were in Ethiopia what was the most gratifying
thing?
Interviewee: Oh wow. That's a tough question because there was - Dr.
Sensor there were a lot of gratifying times. To pick one. To me I
remember one village I had been in Ethiopia and there was a number of
cases of smallpox already in the village. Some children had had
smallpox and we vaccinated and got good coverage, good cooperation
from the local chief in the area and we felt we had a good job. And
so we left that area and then moved on, on to another area. I went
back a couple of months after and I was coming down the road one day
and here was this chief that I had met a couple of months before. And
he got off his mule and he came up to me and he said, "Thank you very
much and thank Haille Sellasse for bringing you because you had saved
much suffering for the children by giving them the vaccination." So
that made me feel great and just knowing that we were beginning to
stop this transmission. That was gratifying that indeed this plan
that had been worked out it was working now, it was working and there
were less and less cases as we went through the years. It was very
gratifying.
There was one time I had been out for about three months or so and I
had reported - in a two week period I had reported over a thousand
cases of smallpox I had recorded. It was just incredible and I
remember talking to D.A. Henderson and he had said that at that time
those two weeks that I had reported he said, "You and Mark Strosberg
and the others that were working in Ethiopia at that time in Kaffa
Province," said, "you had 10% of all the cases of smallpox for that
period of time," so that was another gratifying moment.
Interviewer: In some countries it's alleged that undue force was used
to vaccinate people. Was that ever an issue in Ethiopia?
Interviewee: No for the most part. I remember a few occasions when
we'd be in the market vaccinating. We'd go to the market. Usually
these markets they had once a week in an area so Wednesday was their
market day and we knew this. So we'd go there into the market area
and we'd do a couple of things. One we'd ask for cases of smallpox
and the other one was that we would set up a vaccination for those
that wanted it. Sometimes the local person in charge, the chief or
whatever, wanted to make sure that everybody got vaccinated so they
would drag some of the people to us to get vaccinated. So in that
sense that was - but it was very, it was very rare. I think it was
more often that if people didn't want to get the vaccination we didn't
force it on them. And we knew just the methodology that we didn't
need to vaccinate everybody. We knew if we got the majority of the
contacts that we could break that transmission and indeed that was the
case. So it really wasn't necessary for us to do that. I know all
the volunteers that I worked with in Ethiopia, whether it was in
Bangladesh I mean we never forced people to be vaccinated.
Interviewer: Was there a big contingent of volunteers?
Interviewee: In Ethiopia I think there were thirteen or fourteen of us
that went over in the first group of peace corps volunteers and then
every other year cause we were on a two year cycle, another group of
peace corps volunteers would come in to replace those that were going.
In the second and third year we got some other additional
international volunteers. Some of them from Japan, some of them from
Australia. We had volunteers there also. We had quite an
international group of people in Ethiopia and Bangladesh from I would
say twenty, thirty different countries. It was great to see the
cooperation and working with all those different people. It was
really great. Enjoyed it.
Interviewer: Do you remember the name of the Director of the Ethiopian
smallpox program?
Interviewee: Well that was - the Director for the program he was an
Austrian and that was Dr. Kurt Weithaler.
Interviewer: The Ethiopian one.
Interviewee: Oh, the Ethiopian. I can't remember Dr. Sensor. I worked
with - you know the Ethiopians that I remember are the ones that I
worked with. The sanitarians, the dressers that were down in Kaffa
Province.
Interviewer: The Director of the program was the director of the
control of diarrheal disease in nineteen eighty seven after the
government had changed and it was unhappy situation.
Interviewee: Yeah, it was, it was. I talked and maintained a lot of my
contacts over the years in Ethiopia and almost to the person they
expressed the time after Haille Sellasse as a bad time, as a bad time,
yeah.
Interviewer: How long were you in Bangladesh?
Interviewee: I was in Bangladesh for about six/seven months from April
until November and I think that was seventy five or seventy six. I
can't remember now.
Interviewer: You were there as a peace corps volunteer?
Interviewee: No, I was WHO short term consultant.
Interviewer: WHO then.
Interviewee: Yeah, at that time, yeah. D.A. Henderson said to me at
the time, he says, "Vince," he says, "Yeah, if you're coming I'll tell
you basically we're going to give you $50 a day," and at that time I
thought man that's all the money in the world. So and - but more so
than that just to get a chance of getting back to the smallpox program
you know.
Interviewer: Where were you in Bangladesh?
Interviewee: I was in Sylhet district. When I got there at the
airport, Stan Foster, Dr. Foster was there and he met us. First of
all we went to the office and then he took us to this house they had.
I think they bought the house and it was for the consultants that were
coming over to work on the smallpox program. And we had I think two
days of orientation and then they - he says, "Okay you're in charge on
Sylhet district." And so went up to Sylhet district and worked there
for the entire time except for those occasional times we'd come back
to Dhaka for a meeting or something. A couple of interesting stories
there. Since you were in charge of the entire smallpox program in
Sylhet district, you'd have to pay the vaccinators and translators and
other people that would help you in the smallpox program and we had to
pay them. So we'd come down to Dhaka, we'd have our monthly meeting
or every couple of months we'd have a meeting and the other thing was
to collect - get the money so when we go back we could pay the people
for the work that they had done. Well the denomination in Bangladesh
was taka and I forget what the amount was. I think it was like
fourteen or fifteen taka to the dollar or something like that. So I'd
have this suitcase of money okay and I probably had sixty or seventy
taka in it and I'd feel so uneasy with the suitcase of money, throw it
in the Land Rover and drive up to Sylhet district with all this money.
And I couldn't wait to pay the people so I could get rid of all these
thousands and thousands of taka that I had to operate the program
but...
Interviewer: And [inaudible 16.00] Diego was back in Dhaka worrying
about the receipts.
Interviewee: Right, absolutely. Receipt for everything. I mean you
signed your life away you know, even though at times having the
Bangladesh money, the taka there it sometimes was like monopoly money.
I didn't really think it was real but I did want to get rid of it
because I knew - for them it was very important, you know for the
vaccinators and the other people that were giving us a hand. Well, a
couple - I could tell you [inaudible 16.29] there are a couple of
other stories here.
Interviewer: Go on.
Interviewee: One story which I'll never forget. I'd been in Bangladesh
for a couple of months already and they had this - one of the problems
we had was we of course had to document that there was zero cases. So
any time we'd get a case of rash we'd try to collect this specimen,
get a scab specimen from abrasions, send it off to the lab but we
would still do containment even though clinically it might be
chickenpox and not smallpox. We'd do containment cause we wanted to
be sure. So we'd have to do that containment until we got the lab
report back. Well, they had come on with a new test, a rapid test for
smallpox which we thought was great because we wouldn't have to do the
containment for so long. And so I collected a couple of specimen,
sent them down to Dhaka for testing and they came back positive for
smallpox and I said well there's no way that this is smallpox. I said
this was chickenpox. These were two chickenpox cases. So I called up
Stan, Dr. Foster and I said, "Stan," I said, "I'm sorry but they
screwed up with the lab here okay." And I said, "These are not cases
of smallpox, these are chickenpox." He goes, "Well," he says, "See if
you can get some other scabs and ship them down but still do the
containment." So I did and then a couple of weeks later had another
case of reported rash, did the same thing and it came back positive
again for smallpox. So I called up Stan again and I said, "Stan this
test is no good. I mean we're getting false positives here. I mean I
can't - these are clinically, these are not smallpox cases." He
goes, "Yeah," he says, "Yeah we've been having some discussions about
that here." He says, "But I want you to continue to what you want, to
continue to collect the specimens and send them down."
So I thought to myself you know what I'm going to send him some
specimens but they're not going to be scabs of chickenpox or whatever.
What I went ahead and did was to vaccinate myself with the smallpox
vaccine. Once I got a scab - I vaccinated myself a couple of times in
the arm and I collected those scabs from the vaccine and I put those
in the container and falsified the records and sent them down to Stan
Foster and they came back positive okay for variola virus. And I
said, "Stan," I says, "You know that's vaccinia virus." I said,
"That's what's on there." And he goes, "Okay Vince." He says, "I
knew you were up to something because when you falsified that report
the name that you put on there was a very common Bangladeshi name and
I just knew that wasn't the true case." So later on that test indeed
was no longer used so we went back to the old testing methods.
The other story in Bangladesh that was, that I'll always remember was
my last case of smallpox in Bangladesh. We had gotten a report that
there was a person with smallpox on a public launch. This was a boat
that would go from village to village in Bangladesh up the river and
we heard reports that this person had gotten off this launch at about
three or four different villages okay, but in one of the villages he
had spent overnight. So we went out and visited all those villages
where we had gotten reports where he had stopped especially the
village where he had stopped overnight to visit. Well it turned out
that the people that he was visiting were relatives of his and indeed
from all the descriptions that we had this was a smallpox case. And
we had gotten there -- I don't know -- maybe about a week after he had
been there and there was a small child. It was a female, she was two
or three years old if I remember correctly and the mother had told us
that she had a fever and I go, "Okay." So I said, "Well we're going
to have to keep you in the house and we'll supply you with food and
water. We'll go out and get things for you but we need for you to
stay here." And so we did that and that - even though the child had
fever we vaccinated the child because we weren't sure if this was
going to be smallpox or not. Well indeed it did turn out to be a very
mild case of smallpox but it was smallpox. And a little funny story -
and the child did well and recovered and everybody was grateful.
But what's interesting, on the form that we had we had to put date of
onset and date of discovery. Well, in most cases your date of
discovery was a few days after the date of onset of rash. Now, in
this case when I filled out my report, I put the date of discovery a
couple of days before the beginning of rash. And I thought this is
really great, this is good work. We're getting ahead of the disease.
I said we're going to - we've got this down. So I was very proud of
myself. I was going down to Dhaka to turn in my report to Stan
Foster. He'd gotten my report and then he said, "Mr. Radke I've got
your report here." And I go, "Yeah, I'm very proud." And he goes,
"You've got the date of discovery wrong." "No that was the correct
date." "Mr. Radke you cannot find the disease before it happens." I
says, "Well we did." I says, "We were right on top of it." And he
goes, "No we're going to have to change the date of discovery at least
to the date of onset of the rash." So I had to change my report for
the date of discovery but what was really important to me was at that
point I knew we had gotten a handle on the disease and we were - we
had broken that transmission then so that made me feel good, it made
me feel real good.
Interviewer: What were some of the main obstacles to your work in
Bangladesh?
Interviewee: Oh, the monsoon season was really tough Dave. It - and
that was, for me that was one of the roughest periods because it was
hard to move during the monsoon season. The rains were intense,
sometimes the winds were very intense so you couldn't get out as much
as you wanted and what would happen in Bangladesh when the monsoon
hit, the entire land would just flood out. The rice fields and
everything would just be covered in water and some of the water could
be fairly deep, eight, ten, twelve feet deep. And the only thing you
have then in Bangladesh were these built up villages and those were
the only things that showed and the people couldn't - they didn't have
a lot of boats so they couldn't leave the island. And sometimes if
the people or the cows got too close to the edge of the water in these
villages, they would slip into the water. And you would see - there
would be bodies that would be floating, there would be dead cows would
be floating down the water. And it was just - it was tough to work in
those conditions, it really was. It was a really rough time in the
monsoon season to get around and then to see the death as a result of
the monsoon season. It was bad.
Interviewer: How would you say your work in smallpox influenced your
future?
Interviewee: Oh man, it set me on the road to public health. You've
got to imagine, I was graduating nineteen seventy from Michigan State.
I got to put this a little bit in context here. The killings at Kent
State had happened that spring and I along with a number of other
students organized to shutdown the campus at Michigan State and we did
okay. We shut it down for a couple of days and then the president of
the university got smart, gave the school a day off and by the time
they came back from school we had - the strike had dissipated. But I
didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought well because I hadn't heard
from the peace corps yet and I thought well I'll go into graduate
school and continue with biology maybe work in a lab or something. So
when that call came about to be a peace corps volunteer in Ethiopia
and work in the smallpox program, I was excited. And then when I got
into the program and to see how a public health program could indeed
benefit many people, to me that was very gratifying and I have been in
public health in one aspect or another very since, ever since nineteen
seventy. It sets me - that's where to get my masters degree in public
health and I've been at state and local health departments ever since
I got back to the United States in nineteen seventy eight, seventy
nine and now I'm in environmental health but it's still it's a
practice of public health. So I think there was only a short six
month stint in my entire work history that I was in the private
sector. So it's always been public sector and it's always been public
health so I haven't left it. Enjoyed every moment.
Interviewer: Why did you pick University of Pittsburgh?
Interviewee: I had applied to a number of schools and Pittsburgh was
one of the schools and at the time I'd gotten some financial aid.
They were the only ones to offer some financial aid and as a peace
corps volunteer even though they set aside some money for you every
month while you're a peace corps volunteer, it wasn't a lot of money.
So I didn't have a lot of money. In fact when I got to the University
of Pittsburgh with a little bit of - it was a U.S. public health
traineeship that I got. I also got - had to do some - I had a work
study program so that's why I went there. The other schools were a
little bit more expensive so I chose University of Pittsburgh. Good
school, good school.
Interviewer: Did you know Dr. Cutler?
Interviewee: Oh my goodness! Did I know...
Interviewer: Yes.
Interviewee: Dr. Cutler was my advisor. John Cutler was my advisor.
He was an inspiration to me. I know some of his past but he was a
true gentleman, a true scholar. He guided me on my masters papers
that I did and I - I'm always grateful. And he was the one that I
approached after D.A. Henderson had asked me to come. I went to him
and I said, "Dr. Cutler I have a chance to work in the smallpox
program in Bangladesh. Do you mind if I break my education here for a
little bit?" He goes, "Vince take all the time you want. In fact we
probably can even give you credit for it," for some of that and so I
was very grateful. Stayed in contact with him and his wife until his
passing but I knew John - knew Dr. Cutler and just a wonderful - just
a wonderful man, just a wonderful man. Oh man, that brings back
memories.
Interviewer: Maybe we better stop then. Wow.
Interviewee: You know I've been very lucky. I have met some of the top
leaders in public health that have guided me and I just can't - I just
can't say enough you know. That I've met either at the school of
public health in Pittsburgh or in the smallpox program. It's just
tremendous, just tremendous. You can't put a price on that, you can't
put a price on it.
Interviewer: The smallpox program brought forth an awful lot of good
people.
Interviewee: Oh, oh my goodness. I can't say enough about Don Millard,
D.A. Henderson, Bill Fergie, Joe Breman, yourself. I don't want to
embarrass you. You guys were just - were just great, just great. And
the support, I mean Dr. de Quadros, Dr. Weithaler, tremendous,
tremendous people. Larry Brilliant another one. I can go on and on.
I could go on and on. I mean they're just - it was just - it was an
honor. At the time of course you don't know it. Actually they're
just one of the smallpox guys but later on I come back, it was a real
honor and privilege to work with them. And you know Steve - oh I
could go and on.
Interviewer: You know Larry Brilliant had these tee-shirts made in
Bangladesh that said eradicate chickenpox.
Interviewee: Pox, right yes, yes. I have a shirt and I'll wear it when
I come in July that my wife knitted and it has on the back of it, it
has the smallpox target zero on it. So I'll wear that.
Interviewer: You can still wear it?
Interviewee: Huh? Oh yeah. I don't wear it too often because I don't
wear it out but I have it hanging up in the closet and I bring it out
occasionally so this will be - I should have worn it here.
Interviewer: We'll look forward to it.
Interviewee: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because she even after we got married
she knew. While we were married we went over to Kenya for that last
year for the smallpox program and she knew how important this smallpox
program was to me. So when she knitted that shirt so I'll...
Interviewer: You've been fortunate.
Interviewee: Oh my God.
Interviewer: Another country has been fortunate to have people like
you.
Interviewee: Oh. No, I am fortunate to have known a lot, a lot of good
people in the smallpox program in the public health. And you know
another story. I had - when I came back after I got my masters degree
at the University of Pittsburgh I had also tried to get into CDC and
the EIS program. Well at that time they wanted doctors and you had to
have an MD or DMV and so I couldn't get in and I was always - I was
always sad about that because I had remembered the training I had
gotten here at CDC and the great people. And I thought boy what an
institution to be a part of but I didn't okay. So I thought well you
got to go on with your life, you just can't do nothing. So I stayed
in public health but at the state and local level and that dream of
getting into smallpox that faded until one day I got a call - I got an
email from two colleagues. One at CDC who I had worked with on food
borne disease outbreaks earlier and another colleague in Minnesota
that I was working with and both of them said to me, "Vince there's an
ideal job at CDC for you." They were looking for a sanitarian for
their program there, the environmental health services branch. And I
go, "Well." I says, "Guys I'm not interested now. My wife and I are
in Minnesota, we're doing great." And the one guy at CDC who was an
EIS officer said, "No, Vince you owe me okay. You need to at least
apply here."
So make a long story short, I applied and got in. To me Dave CDC was
always the temple, the public health temple on a mount and so I'm so
grateful to be here. Just so grateful. This is a great place to
work. Great place to work.
Interviewer: On that note we better quit.
Interviewee: Yeah.
</pre>
Player
html for embedded player to stream video content
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kInVdz_LBis" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
RADKE, VINCE
Subject
The topic of the resource
Smallpox Eradication
Description
An account of the resource
Vince Radke, MPH., describes his early life, his decision to join the Peace Corps, his work in Ethiopia and Bangladesh during the smallpox eradication programs in 1972-75. Explains how this changed his life and career path.
Interviewed by Dr. David Sencer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The David J. Sencer CDC Museum at the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30333
www.cdc.gov/museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
April 1, 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
7336560000 bytes
video/x-dv
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/16s37
emory:16s37
-
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/2c6fb3841eba06514830b5afa9ab4e7c.jpg
b5827d1853179cc0066bca6e00375bc6
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/f421a75005a3047326938af9b1370218.pdf
b92bbc1092439c0b5f12d28f0f22136f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smallpox
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="landing">
<p>Smallpox disease was declared eradicated in 1980, the result of a collaborative global campaign. To date, it is the only disease affecting humans to be eradicated from the world. Global eradication of smallpox ranks among the great achievements of humankind. Gone, through determined human effort, is a disease which has brought death to millions, frequently altering the course of history, and traveling through the centuries to every part of the world. </p>
<p>The vital contributions made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are highlighted. Official government correspondence, meeting transcripts, policy statements, surveillance reports and mortality statistics tell a part of that story. Adding depth to these traditional archives are the personal stories of the public health pioneers who worked tirelessly on the frontlines of the smallpox eradication campaign.</p>
<p>The links above connect you to a database of oral histories, photographs, documents, and other media.</p>
<p>Use of this information is free, but please see <strong>“About this Site”</strong> for guidance on how to acknowledge the sources of the information used</p>
</div>
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Player
html for embedded player to stream video content
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZXXH576_UWw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
MACK, THOMAS M.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Smallpox
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Tom Mack discusses epidemiologic observations in Africa and Pakistan. Tom had not been part of the formal Smallpox Eradication Program team but has researched areas of smallpox epidemiology.
Interviewed by Melissa McSwegin
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The David J. Sencer CDC Museum at the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30333
www.cdc.gov/museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 11, 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Centers for Disease Control
Reunion of Southeast Asia and East Africa Smallpox Workers (2008 : Atlanta, Georgia)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
8188560000 bytes
video/x-dv
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/16s23
emory:16s23
-
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/53da523d4271248d7d65d8b6a75dc881.jpg
b32364351a5ca7f3b07fdf5fff40a688
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smallpox
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="landing">
<p>Smallpox disease was declared eradicated in 1980, the result of a collaborative global campaign. To date, it is the only disease affecting humans to be eradicated from the world. Global eradication of smallpox ranks among the great achievements of humankind. Gone, through determined human effort, is a disease which has brought death to millions, frequently altering the course of history, and traveling through the centuries to every part of the world. </p>
<p>The vital contributions made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are highlighted. Official government correspondence, meeting transcripts, policy statements, surveillance reports and mortality statistics tell a part of that story. Adding depth to these traditional archives are the personal stories of the public health pioneers who worked tirelessly on the frontlines of the smallpox eradication campaign.</p>
<p>The links above connect you to a database of oral histories, photographs, documents, and other media.</p>
<p>Use of this information is free, but please see <strong>“About this Site”</strong> for guidance on how to acknowledge the sources of the information used</p>
</div>
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Player
html for embedded player to stream video content
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vGm3xkyWv9o" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
FITZGERALD, STEVE
Subject
The topic of the resource
Somalia
Description
An account of the resource
Steve Fitzgerald describes his experiences in India, Somalia and Ethiopia during the Smallpox Eradication Program as well as, an outbreak of yellow fever in West Africa
Interviewed by Melissa McSwegin
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The David J. Sencer CDC Museum at the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30333
www.cdc.gov/museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 10, 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Centers for Disease Control
Reunion of Southeast Asia and East Africa Smallpox Workers (2008 : Atlanta, Georgia)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
12417840000 bytes
video/x-dv
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/16s1z
emory:16s1z
-
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/a14efb4876e19798ed4188337823e916.JPG
135e6ef2baee7c0adf478b944437aaf3
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/2004fffab008be1051279b90bc2a4356.pdf
99ab9a0ed4c6bcf117145ae31a0fad4c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smallpox
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="landing">
<p>Smallpox disease was declared eradicated in 1980, the result of a collaborative global campaign. To date, it is the only disease affecting humans to be eradicated from the world. Global eradication of smallpox ranks among the great achievements of humankind. Gone, through determined human effort, is a disease which has brought death to millions, frequently altering the course of history, and traveling through the centuries to every part of the world. </p>
<p>The vital contributions made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are highlighted. Official government correspondence, meeting transcripts, policy statements, surveillance reports and mortality statistics tell a part of that story. Adding depth to these traditional archives are the personal stories of the public health pioneers who worked tirelessly on the frontlines of the smallpox eradication campaign.</p>
<p>The links above connect you to a database of oral histories, photographs, documents, and other media.</p>
<p>Use of this information is free, but please see <strong>“About this Site”</strong> for guidance on how to acknowledge the sources of the information used</p>
</div>
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound.
<pre><strong>
Interview Transcript
</strong>
Conversation
Dr. William Foege & Dr. William Foege
Transcribed: January 30, 2009 | Duration 0:41:22
A Conversation between Dr Mahendra Dutta & Dr William Foege
Introduction
Today is the 9th of July, 2008. This is a taping as part of the Continuing
Series of all Histories of Smallpox Eradication Program. Today Dr. William
Foege and Dr. Mahendra Dutta are going to have a conversation. Both of them
know that this is being taped and they've signed permission for us to tape
and to use it in appropriate manners.
Dr. William Foege: Okay. Mahendra, 30-plus years ago, we spent so much
time together working on smallpox, but I never asked you, how
did you happen to get into the program? Did you volunteer? Was
this dictated?
Dr.Mahendra Dutta: Yes, I did volunteer. I had returned from my
training in Epidemiology for nearly 9 months back to the office
where I worked with the Director General of Health Services and
the campaign was being mounted and they needed more people to
help in the campaign, and that's how I volunteered.
Dr. William Foege: Ah, ah. So you did volunteer. Now, we've often
talked about the top group of people. You, M.I.D Sharma, C.K
Rao, Pidish, and so forth, an extraordinary team, but how did it
happen that they came together, because I don't think you could
have found a better group of people if you'd searched the world.
How did that happen?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: There was a continuous process of selection. People
at the helm of affairs in the Ministry of Health, technocrats,
were getting involved and those who could not perform they were
quitting also. So ultimately the fittest survived. So that's how
you saw them all together.
Dr. William Foege: Ah! So this was evolution. Okay-Survival of the
fittest. Now there was a person I was very fond of early on in
the program who was running the program in Bihar. I totally
missed the fact that he was extracting funds from us at an
alarming rate. How did you pick that up and how did you handle
it?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: I got involved with the program in February when Dr.
Dish[inaudible name0:02:49] asked me to visit and see how things
are moving there because he was not comfortable.
Dr. William Foege: This was February 1974?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: February 1974, and in this visit, when I reached, I
went to a district, Munger, there is a district by that name,
where I spent a week seeing how things are happening. The
reports we were receiving were that people do not accept
vaccination; and when I went there I was surprised. Every
morning we went to villages, we had a team of 20 people to
vaccinate with us, and one after another village where we went,
people were pleading to get vaccinated; and the stories that we
got were: so many died in this village, people were really
alarmed. They wanted vaccination, then the civil surgeon, the
head of the health administration of the district was hostile to
Dr. Sinha and he narrated me all those stories, how he is
employing over and above the normal staff, some extra workers,
and virtually paying them 1/5th or 1/6th of the money that they
are supposed to get and the remaining is being pocketed. So this
was corroborated by another colleague who had worked with me
earlier who was my other class fellow in the public health
training, and he corroborated that this is actually happening. I
finally met the Health Commissioner at a very personal level in
a club and told him. He said that this is no news to him. So
then everybody knew-so I said then, "What to do." The gentleman
said, "Well! I am not heading the health services. It is a
technocrat there. He has to come. I am a bureaucrat. Then only,
I will step in." It went on like this, till fortunately, let me
say, may be you are aware, in 1974 May, there was a nuclear
explosion in India.
Dr. William Foege: I remember that!
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Pokharan, and after Pokhran, the Newsweek in its
front page carried a report, "Another Explosion in India" and
this was the smallpox explosion in Bihar, when you will
recollect that in our May search, we discovered over 8,500 new
outbreaks with 11,000 cases. So -
Dr. William Foege: In one week, 11,000 cases - if I can just interject
here - The previous Fall, D.A Henderson had asked me, "What's
the largest number of cases you will find in any State in a week
in India?" And we actually took this quite seriously, and we
concluded that it would be less than1,000 cases. So we suggested
that they use 3 digits for their computer programming. D.A-
always suspicious of us; added 4 digits, and then we had to call
and say, we've had 11,000-plus cases in one week, in one State,
and so even the computers were not cooperating anymore. Okay, so
go ahead - then May of 1974...
Dr MahendraDutta: Yeah, then the stage came that the government of
India and the State Government, they all got really startled
because a lot of journalists who had come to Rajasthan to cover
the nuclear explosion, they moved into Bihar and started
reporting. Now at that point of time, we were asked by the
Health Commissioner there who was the chief bureaucrat in the
Health Service. Earlier he took the stand that the Technical
Head should come to me but now he himself went to the political
head and told him that this is the problem that they want the
Program Manager Dr. Sinha to be moved out; and then he was - a
substitute was selected by consensus. He was a very good person.
Everybody felt that he was going to deliver, and he moved in and
then things moved. So after that, we had very fast track
movements on the program.
Dr. William Foege: I want to come back to this, but this has always
been an example to me of an outsider not able to see what was
actually happening and an insider understanding immediately what
was happening. What else did I miss?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Well, you didn't miss much because even in this
case, I recall you were believing that smallpox will definitely
go sooner or later. I wanted it to be sooner.
Dr. William Foege: Yes,
Dr Mahendra Dutta: That's about the only difference of you.
Dr. William Foege: So the reporters came to India, they did their
reporting on the nuclear test and now looking for other stories,
suddenly this becomes a very good story. Smallpox is out of
control and they have no background to know that this is partly
due to the improvement of the program and surveillance was
improving and there were a lot of people now on the problem, but
it caused Parliament to make life miserable for you because
everyday they were asking for explanations; and how important
was that in diverting people from smallpox eradication to
answering Parliament?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Well, the group of workers who were handling at the
National level for the Parliament was only being fed by the
peripheral workers. We were not disturbed much in the field. In
fact, we were helped by this lot of reporters coming in and
giving the stories. It was a helpful thing because the
Government at that time asked us to request whatever we needed
more and we increased our efforts far more then.
Dr. William Foege: What was Karan Singh's, the Minister of Health, what
was his approach to all of that bad news?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Oh! He was the real support. He recognized that the
disease is being tackled in other States and it was only the
problem of inactivity in Bihar, that's why they were lagging
behind. So he himself visited later in Bihar and emphasized that
we put in more efforts and things were already showing up, and
very soon things will be completed. In fact, we recollect that
he all along was a big moral support.
Dr. William Foege: So, at the very top, you had all the support you
needed. If you go down a layer, to the Director General of
Health Services, to Dr. J.B Srivastav, what was his role at this
time?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Unfortunately he belonged to the group of
unbelievers. There were people, I believe in every country, who
did not believe that Smallpox can be eradicated vis-à-vis the
others. He belonged to the other group and he was always
pessimistic about our claims of eradicating it very soon. So all
I recollect is that I had a very good liaison with him and he,
several times, enquired of me, "Is it real what you are
reporting-so good a progress in so short a time?" So that was
the main thing he would always accept when I say so and I
recollect when later we were so close to the endpoint and we
were going in for announcing a reward for a case. The minister
was to make that announcement on July 1, 1974. He was asking,
"Isn't it too early to make such an announcement?" And I said,
"Well the amount of money and effort we are putting in each day,
I shall be so happy that if I can have all the remaining few
hundred cases discovered by this reward and it will save a lot
of money and time." It was a matter of chance that not a single
case was found and we didn't have to pay a single reward but Dr.
Srivastav had apparently not been at the most peripheral level,
in the field level; that is why he couldn't appreciate how
thoroughly the things were happening.
Dr. William Foege: How powerful was his pessimism in influencing the
Minister of Health of Bihar when they wanted to change back to
mass vaccination.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: He came to Patna on the asking of the Minister of
Health and addressed the civil surgeons and at this meeting he
pleaded that the ultimate solution of the problem would be
covering backlog of mass primary vaccinations; children who have
never been vaccinated. Unfortunately, the minister took it very
seriously and wrote to Dr. Karan Singh, the Indian Minister for
Health that your Director General has requested that we should
cover the backlog of primary vaccinations, children who have
never been vaccinated. He asked for money; vaccine and
bifurcated needles for vaccination to harness a new
organization, the block level health staff to complete it.
Because Dr. Srivastav said he is not against the firefighting
efforts that are being carried out. So Dr. Srivastav's comments
were sought about the statement that he made and I recollect
that Dr. Srivastav was uncomfortable how to respond to it and he
asked me, I had to go back from Patna and I said there is an
anomaly. They too are saying the same thing; that first we bring
the disease to zero level and thereafter we can concentrate on
the backlog of primary vaccinations which we never needed there,
probably; and it was completed without the backlog. Nobody
needed it.
Dr. William Foege: Now you talked about the believers and the
unbelievers. Do you recall the day you became a believer?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: I recall the day when the non-believers were
shunted out. I was responsible myself. Several of my Indian
colleagues who came to work in Bihar with me in the initial
discussions, they belonged to that thinking, though they were
working and I pleaded with them, if you don't believe, probably,
morally, you should not agree to do it. Couple of them did go
back instantly, because unless you have a conviction that you
can achieve, then you are not doing it.
Dr. William Foege: The National Institute of Communicable Diseases put
a lot of effort into this program. Did they take great pride at
it when it succeeded; and did it make a difference in the way
the Government of India supported NICD.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Oh! Tremendously; I believe they are surviving on
the laurels of achievement of smallpox even today. That's the
biggest thing they did. Of course, they did a couple of other
good things after that but smallpox is a feather in their cap.
Dr. William Foege: There were very many foreign workers and often
times coming for three months and then leaving, and that's the
most difficult, to get people acclimated in 3 months to get some
productive work out of them and then have them leave. What were,
from your point of view, the biggest problems of having these
foreign workers in India?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Well, I recollect when they landed in Patna, they
volunteered, many of them came through CDC, and when they
arrived in Patna, they were very enthusiastic in performing. At
the same time, probably, they have never worked in a developing
country before. So they were also apprehensive. What we did was
that upon their arrival, besides the technical briefing, a
sociologist was made to speak with them; and this session
attracted them the most. They had so many things to ask the
sociologist. Probably, this was the longest session in the
briefing in Patna, three to four hours, and they were told about
the communities in India, how they operate and how they live
together. So that helped them to know quickly, in the filed, how
to perform. I recollect that the work to be done was so much
that many of them did long extended hours of the day in the
field. From morning till late evening, and we were always
telling them that in the summer months, you should not be out in
the peak hours in the noon but they were defying it also in the
enthusiasm that they must complete the work before they leave.
Fortunately, some of them, and they were good, those some of
them; they asked for extending their period of stay so that
before they leave they could see things happening and I
recollect at least, a couple of them, Steve Jones and David
Hyman; they were later on moved to Bangladesh but they stayed
for about five months in India. So that was their enthusiasm to
show the results. The small mistake that happened in the
beginning, a couple of them arrived with their better-halves and
they couldn't perform because field conditions in India were not
so conducive for their wives to stay alone; and they did not
perform well in the field, and subsequently we had to advice
that anybody coming here must come without their spouse.
Dr. William Foege: So you worked them so hard maybe 90 days was as long
as they could actually take. We wore them out. Have you ever
thought pf what were the biggest mistakes that were made in the
program. If you were doing it all over again, what would you
avoid doing?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: I don't see back, anything wrong, the only thing
that for this short program, as I said, it lasted hardly an year
or so, and there were other programs that suffered because
everybody was occupied with this program, but we had to pursue
with those programs. I recollect that Family Planning was our
biggest competitor as a program, and time and again, the people
in the family planning were disturbed but we had to tell them
that ours was going to last a few more months, and later on we
can join with you in the program.
Dr. William Foege: That brings up the question; if the National
Institute of Communicable Diseases took great pride in this, did
Family Planning take pride in the contribution they made-because
it was an enormous contribution?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Well, maybe that was only after April or sometime in
1975 that the Family Planning was given a top priority during
the emergency era in India. Before that, they had certain target
approach and that's why they were more eager to perform and let
not their workers be diverted to help in smallpox. Because in
the smallpox, we involved every month, for a week all health
workers for the search and that's what was disturbing them but
seeing the results, they also agreed that we are doing some job
and let it be finished.
Dr. William Foege: You mention that it was in truth a very short
program, at the time it seemed to go on forever. But it only
took us three months to sort of come up with the system, another
four months to perfect the system and then, India went from the
highest rates in May of 1974 to zero twelve months later. No
place else in the world was the change so fast, so dramatic,
it's amazing in retrospect to even look at that. But then you
went on from India to work in Ethiopia. Compare the two
programs.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Things were very different in Indian program. We did
not have the difficult terrain working conditions in the field.
In Ethiopia, the communications in the field was so difficult,
and here I recollect when at the end phases, every case
occurring in Bihar, I personally went to that village, I could
reach in less than 24 hours. But this could not happen over
there. They needed a much prolonged sustained effort, and I was
part of it that was done from moving from one district to
another so that you make one area free. There, the people also
do not move so much as they do in India; because here in the
Indian program, fortunately, when our efforts were at the peak
that was the lean season for transmission. The disease was
expected to come down with the onset of monsoons but our efforts
were peaking up further. So that's how we could come over so
soon. Because around October-November, when the rains cease and
people started moving about again, we were left with very few
cases; 150 odd villages where the disease was present, and I
recollect later in July, we had some junior teams, mobile teams,
we stationed a team in every outbreak and these young doctors
who were coming as medical interns, they performed so well
because they were all trained, they were all relied upon, they
were amazed at what kind of faith we were placing upon them.
I recollect those who were bearded Sikh gentlemen, when I met
them in the field, they removed their beard; I have no time to
wash every day; and those who didn't have the beard, they were
having beard, I have no time to shave everyday. So those young
people changed the whole complex. Then we introduced the
strategy of guarding the case which was paying dividend that the
case would not be allowed to spread the disease to another
place, around the clock, 8 hour shifts, watch guards were
placed, watch guard supervisor was placed. The family was
compensated that they can't go out for work. So therefore we
will pay rent for the house where our guards will stay; so all
these strategies helped in achieving a very fast disappearance
of the disease.
Dr. William Foege: Its nice, 33 years after the last case, to hear you
talk about it and still have the enthusiasm that you had 33
years ago. What is it though that you would like to tell to
young public health workers that you've learned from this
experience that you hope you can pass on.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: All I could say in brief was that in public health,
community approach, your conviction, your devotion and team
effort, that's what matters the most. The entire team of workers
national, international, higher, lower level functionaries, they
all worked like a very close team; and that's what I can believe
public health team-effort approach-is pride.
Dr. William Foege: I agree with you. I think that's the lesson of
smallpox in India; that the team worked as a unit. It was a
coalition in truth, and people lost their national identities...
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Absolutely, absolutely.
Dr. William Foege: ...their personal identities and it seems as though
we made decisions based on everyone agreeing, I can't remember
that we ever took a vote or had really strong disagreements. So
it seems to me that it was a coalition that was quite unique.
Now, I worry that we have lost the words now of people like
M.I.D Sharma. You talked to him a great deal after smallpox
eradication and I don't know if you have any message that you
would like to pass on from MID Sharma or Dr. Pidish, or some of
the other people who we don't have a chance to question.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: I was meeting them till/[while] they were alive, and
my only understanding was that they felt that the success story
of smallpox eradication was also an achievement which gave them
satisfaction in their life, and the only thing which I felt they
wanted the young generation to follow or emulate what they saw
was, the same thing as I said earlier, that devoted efforts,
team efforts always mattered in community health work.
Dr. William Foege: Years later, I had lunch with Dr. Pidish and he said
something similar, that it was quite different to be on an
Indian team than to be on an international team working on an
Indian problem, and he said to me at that time that, "If you
come back to India, I will come out of retirement," we will do
this again.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: I would say the same. Working with you was a real
pleasure.
Dr. William Foege: Thank you. How did you get into public health
though?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: That was a very different story. My father was a
Public Health Physician.
Dr. William Foege: I know, the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored him.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Yes, he was a Rockefeller Fellow and right from when
I graduated from the medical school, I made the choice that I am
going to study in the School of Public Health. I didn't waste
any time. Very next year, I joined the School of Public Health.
Dr. William Foege: Where?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: In Calcutta in India, and then pursued the career
through married[inaudible0:28:34] life, and I have no regrets.
Dr. William Foege: And what did you do after smallpox eradication?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Oh! After smallpox I worked with the Municipal
Corporation of the City of Delhi. I was their Chief Health
Officer for a few years.
Dr. William Foege: Your father had done the same thing?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Oh, he'd done the same thing too, and then I was the
Chief Epidemiologist of the NICD for a three-year period, and
finally I was the Deputy Director General for the public health
work in the Ministry of Health, and looking back I feel very
happy that I worked in these positions and got a satisfaction.
Dr. William Foege: But there is something genetic here also. Talk about
your son.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Oh, he chose it himself, that he wants to also be a
Public Health Physician. He came to the U.S. He was a bit
disgusted about the policies of reservation for certain backward
classes, and he said that he may not get the opportunity in
India to work in the specific field where he wishes to work, and
he will choose to go to public health work and go to U.S. for
training. So I said, "If you wish to go, its up to you." So he
is working here.
Dr. William Foege: Three weeks ago, I was at my final meeting at the
Rockefeller Foundation and I was asked to speak to the staff,
and I said: when people ask me what the Rockefeller Foundation
has done, I resist talking about the Green Revolution, or the
Yellow Fever Vaccine, or the Hookworm Program; I said-I talk
about the scholarships that they gave to people around the
world, and I talked about your father getting one of those to
study public health and that for three generations, this
investment by the Rockefeller Foundation has continued to pay
off. I mean, it's just a wonderful story.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: Very nice of you to say that. My father has left
behind his writings of life and he feels the same, that I
received the training in public through the Rockefeller Program
and I owed a lot to repay it, and I have repaid it because my
son followed the same, my grandson followed the same. So that's
the same way he thought.
Dr. William Foege: In India, how do we improve the number of people
going into public health? You've done it. You've found it to be
a very enjoyable satisfying profession. How do we increase the
number of people doing this?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: It has been a dilemma for all the years but I don't
know how, but things appear to be going haywire now. More and
more people are interested in public health. It's a big change
happening in recent years, and I recollect that four years ago,
a Foundation with the collaboration from the Harvard University
was established to raise Public Health Schools in India -
establish new Schools of Public. Medical Research Council also
following the same example, they are also supporting
establishment of new schools of public health; and the young
doctors are also getting more interested in pursuing Public
Health as careers. Unfortunately, so far the Governmental System
doesn't create more opportunities or caters for public health
people. But I am sure there are two ways of doing it. One is
that you train the people and there will be careers coming up,
the other way is you create careers and then you find shortage
and then people will be trained. So apparently we are going the
other way round. People will get trained and opportunities will
be created to meet those demands. Already several programs,
National [inaudible0:33:06] Programs have started creating posts
for public health physicians at district levels and lower. So
that approach probably is going to be there.
Dr. William Foege: I think we are seeing a renaissance of global health
interest in recent years and I am just pleased that we both
lived long enough to see what's going to be a great change in
the future.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: I wish too.
Dr. William Foege: Are there stories or things that you want to say
about the Smallpox Eradication Program because, you know, we may
never get an opportunity like this again to talk about it. Are
there things that you want to make sure that people hear?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: We have said a lot but the only thing I'll add will
be that in achieving success, besides technical things, there is
also an element of administrative tact, I would call it; whether
you say diplomacy in the modified terms but we, people in public
health, should use this more often and after all you have to
work with your own team, and also this is the team in our
system: there is a bureaucracy, there is a political leadership.
So you have to work along with them and carry them with you.
Dr. William Foege: I hope to make that point at our reunion that behind
every public health decision, there is a political decision...
Dr Mahendra Dutta: True.
Dr. William Foege: ...and that we end up trying to educate politicians
but it's a very labor-intensive sort of thing to do because the
politicians keep turning over; that they have a limited time in
office and that I now miss no opportunity to try to get public
health people to go into politics. It seems to be a shortcut,
more efficient, if we can get more public health people to
actually become politicians.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: I wish it happens in my country too. At the moment,
we are facing a dilemma because more and more politicians are
coming from another group, the group which is rather not
desirable but they are the people who flout laws and more and
more of them are entering into politics. A separate stream has
come. Formerly, most politicians were coming over from
categories like rich people, business people, like accepted
heads of the communities. Now some bad elements have started
infiltrating into politics.
Dr. William Foege: We are years ahead of you.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: It is worrying, not me, but it is worrying the
Indian Government itself; how to get rid of these elements in
the politics. Anyway, it's not for me to too much comment on
that.
Dr. William Foege: But that seems to be a chronic problem in many
countries. Let me ask you one final question and that is, the
remarkable contribution made by TATA for the Smallpox
Eradication Program where you had a private corporation agree to
work under Government rules and to use the same approaches and
so forth. It now has happened with other corporations, MURK with
what they have done with River Blindness and Glaxo Smith-Kline
with lymphatic psoriasis and so forth, but that was a very early
example of what TATA did. Has this continued? Do you have
private, public collaboration in health programs from that TATA
experience?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: All I would say is that per force, we had to go for
that collaboration because the Southern Bihar lacked adequate
infrastructure of health from the Government side and TATA has
had a very good infrastructure in that region. They have their
[inaudible0:37:35] and coal fields and factories all over-
spread. Therefore we approached them and they readily agreed
because they were working with the people there where it was
benefitting. I have seen that now it has become a Governmental
Policy in recent years to accept that kind of - because the
medical care itself is going to the private sector more and
more; and government is only obliged to deliver public health
service to the community; the preventive medical care, and in
these efforts, they know that we cannot invest so much, so they
are seeking collaborations from non-governmental agencies
including the private sector.
Dr. William Foege: Well, this has been great fun to get together again
after - we have done it before, but till now at 33 years to talk
a little bit about this, and I will say this on Saturday, but I
want to be sure that it gets recorded now. How wonderful it was
to work with you, what a hard field worker you are, that you
never shied away from doing anything that needed to be done in
the field, and you were just the epitome of deliberate
approaches to solving problems, rather than getting excited when
things went wrong, you would sit down and ask how do we solve
this problem and so it was great to work with you then, and it's
great to hear you reminiscence now.
Dr Mahendra Dutta: I am also pleased that I'd worked with you, and in
fact I learnt also a lot of things, but basically, as I said,
our team-approach was the most successful approach.
Dr. William Foege: Great-good. Thank you.
Question from Audience: May I ask one question? Did he play jokes on you?
Dr Mahendra Dutta: He played rings because whenever he had nothing -
rather, he had something in his brain lurking to solve, he would
have a set of rings how to unfold them. But I don't think Bill
was that kind of person. He was a serious person. The best thing
I recollect is he was a very good assessor. He could assess how
people are performing and that's what we got from him; his
personal assessment of people who were coordinating, who could
survive.
Dr. William Foege: But the ring story reminds me of an absolutely true
story; where we were going to a meeting where another person had
absolutely different ideas than I did, and I knew that because
we discussed it quite often; and it was a 2-day meeting. It was
early in the first meeting when I took off my puzzle ring and
let it fall apart, and I just said, "Oh could you put this back
together? He had had a puzzle ring as a child and he said sure.
He spent the next six hours on this puzzle ring. He even missed
the discussion of the issue that I was worried about where he
would bring up the other side. We were passed on other things
before he realized that the puzzle ring had kept him occupied.
***
Thank both of you.
[End of audio]
</pre>
Player
html for embedded player to stream video content
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pc6RzIlxjKg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
DUTTA M. WITH FOEGE W.
Description
An account of the resource
A Conversation between Dr. Mahendra Dutta and Dr. William Foege, two of the key people in the smallpox eradication program in India.
Dr. Mahendra Dutta, former New Delhi, India Health Commissioner
Dr. William Foege, former CDC Director
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The David J. Sencer CDC Museum at the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30333
www.cdc.gov/museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 10, 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
8928960000 bytes
video/x-dv
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/16rk2
emory:16rk2
-
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/cd9c59fc10df93186b073c1dd81353c8.jpg
15e7980cb2e517147851d6f369f1ec15
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/bc601c6c4356d4b94779f5ad0a296678.pdf
28d5b36c8168e32d6428726a82d6450d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smallpox
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="landing">
<p>Smallpox disease was declared eradicated in 1980, the result of a collaborative global campaign. To date, it is the only disease affecting humans to be eradicated from the world. Global eradication of smallpox ranks among the great achievements of humankind. Gone, through determined human effort, is a disease which has brought death to millions, frequently altering the course of history, and traveling through the centuries to every part of the world. </p>
<p>The vital contributions made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are highlighted. Official government correspondence, meeting transcripts, policy statements, surveillance reports and mortality statistics tell a part of that story. Adding depth to these traditional archives are the personal stories of the public health pioneers who worked tirelessly on the frontlines of the smallpox eradication campaign.</p>
<p>The links above connect you to a database of oral histories, photographs, documents, and other media.</p>
<p>Use of this information is free, but please see <strong>“About this Site”</strong> for guidance on how to acknowledge the sources of the information used</p>
</div>
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound.
<pre><strong>
Interview Transcript
</strong>
Interview
Dr. Davida Coady with Interviewer Chris Vaniser
Transcribed: January 2009 | Duration: 0:33:21
Chris Vaniser: This is an interview with Davida Coady on July 11, 2008 at
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta,
Georgia about her role in the Smallpox Eradication Project. The
interviewer is Chris Vaniser.
With this interview we are helping to capture for future
generations the memories of participants and their families
involved in eradicating smallpox. This is an incredibly
important and historic achievement and we want to hear about
your experience. I have some questions to guide you, but please
feel free to recount any special stories or anecdotes that you
remember about events or people. The legal agreement you signed
says that you are donating the oral history to the U.S. Federal
Government and it will be in the public domain. For the record,
could you please state your full name and that you know you are
being recorded.
Davida Coady: Davida Coady, and yes I realize I am being recorded.
Chris Vaniser: Thank you again for coming and sharing your memories about
the Smallpox Eradication Project or Program. I guess to start,
if you could talk a little bit about your early days before
going on to college and if you knew what you wanted to do with
your life, or what you wanted to be when you grew up; and share
a little bit of that information with us.
Davida Coady: I grew up in Berkeley, California in a family, none of
whom had graduated from High School previously. I was fortunate
enough though to be living in Berkeley, it had some good role
models and decided that I wanted to something worthwhile with my
life. I met two women doctors, pediatricians, running a camp for
diabetic children and I decided that I would try to go to
medical school and I did so. I read about Dr. Tom Dooley and his
work in Southeast Asia, and I decided I wanted to spend part of
my life in the Third World and went to medical school with that
idea.
Chris Vaniser: Were you thinking of being more of a clinician?
Davida Coady: I was thinking more about being a clinician. I went to
Columbia Medical School and of the acceptances I got, I chose
that school because they had an elected[inaudible0:02:49] in
Liberia in the fourth year, and I went there and I made a
decision that I would definitely go into pediatrics. I also
realized that I really loved working in a third world country. I
think up until that point I had kind of a moderate complex. I
thought I was going to die young of malaria or something, but it
hadn't occurred to me really that I would enjoy being in the
third world and working in places where you could be innovative
and where people really needed you, where the young people;
people who were being trained as nurses would be so eager to
learn, and any time that you would spend with them, they would
pick your brain about everything you knew, and I saw lots of
people getting well. I also became aware of the need for Public
Health. So during my Pediatric Internship and Residency at UCLA
I found time to go to Mexico and then to Guatemala where I met
Dr. Thomas Weller from the Harvard School of Public Health and I
talked to him about career development and he persuaded me that
I needed an MPH if I really wanted to work in Prevention which I
certainly did by that point. So I went to the Harvard School of
Public Health and then jumped into Third World work from there.
Chris Vaniser: So where did you go then after Harvard?
Davida Coady: I went first to Nigeria, only I was in the part that was
then called Biafra. I was there obviously during the Nigerian
civil war. I worked with a small relief agency run by Normal
Cousins inside of Biafra and got out the night that the country
collapsed. I was sent back to Nigeria on a Government assignment
shortly thereafter as part of the relief efforts for what had
been the former Biafran enclave and it was there I got really
acquainted with Bill Foege and Stan Foster and people who became
my heroes, my mentors, my gurus; and I became so interested in
smallpox campaign. I then went to work at the Peace Corps, first
as their Acting Medical Director and then as a Health Programmer
and it was during that time that I met D.A. Henderson and he
became one of my big heroes in life and I was involved in the
Peace Corps involvement in smallpox at that point. Then later on
I left the Peace Corps, I went to UCLA to teach and I went to
Bangladesh after their revolution and was working there when I
ran into Dr. Henderson in the airport in Dhaka. Actually he was
getting off a plane and I was getting on a plane. He said "Hey
Bill Foege is in India and he is looking for people to work on
smallpox on three-month assignments;" and I said "Oh wow, I am
interested!" and the next day I got a telegram from Bill Foege
asking me to come to Delhi and talk about it which I did and -
Chris Vaniser: Where were you based with at the time? You were with the
Peace Corps at that time?
Davida Coady: No, I was still - I had gone to UCLA at that point to be
an academic, but I am not an academic, I don't like it. I like
teaching, but I didn't like the rest of it, and by that time I
was a part time academic, but mainly working on my own. For
years then I taught one or two Quarters a year at UCLA and did
international work the rest of the time.
Chris Vaniser: So you got this telegram from Bill Foege asking you to
come and talk to him in Delhi?
Davida Coady: In Delhi-and I was actually on my way home and I did; and
I arranged to go back a few weeks later. I was getting married
at that point and my husband - I thought it would be much easier
to work out in the Boonies in India with a partner, and he was
interested and we went back to India; Bill sent us to Gorakhpur.
So I was the first woman field epidemiologist and there were a
number who followed me. They were watching me very closely and -
you know, it was a real highlight of my life, it was just such a
wonderful thing to be part of. I've been part of lots of
different Public Health initiatives of one kind or another, but
this was something that was so clear that you could see the
results. So we put a 1000 miles a week on our Land Rover, a lot
of it on dirt roads going around to the villages in India and
many villages there, in those Northern districts of the Uttar
Pradesh, they had never seen a white woman. In fact they had
really never had any women visitors and all kind of rumors would
go around the villages about who I was. The one I liked best was
that occasionally the rumor would go round that I was Indira
Gandhi and so I - that was kind of fun; and I would tell them
that I was not, but I -
Chris Vaniser: How long did you go over for? What was your - ?
Davida Coady: I think we were there for a three month assignment and
then we were extended for several months after that and then we
went back to Los Angeles for a couple of months, and then went
back for a second assignment, and the second assignment was in
West Bengal. I had asked particularly to go to Calcutta, I love
Calcutta, and so we were based in Calcutta in charge of the four
districts to the North and the East, East - No I am sorry, it
was actually the North and the West of Calcutta and then when
Calcutta - when West Bengal was free of smallpox we were
transferred to Bangladesh.
Chris Vaniser: Going back to Gorakhpur again, which was your first
assignment in India and your first smallpox assignment, can you
tell me a little bit about your team that you worked with?
Davida Coady: We had an Indian doctor, Dr. Rao[inaudible name0:10:14],
who was from South India who worked with us, and he kind of took
two of the districts and I took two of the districts. We had a
wonderful paramedical assistant and a driver who we became very
close to; and we went touring around the countryside. I think
one of the things that I did was I realized that the people
working on it in the villages, the doctors, the health workers;
they had no idea when I got there that this was part of an
international effort. So I managed to get a map of the State of
Uttar Pradesh, and another map of India, and another map of the
world. These were not easy to come by in Gorakhpur, but I got
them. Now we would take them around to the districts and we'd go
through and I'd show them what they were part of, and hundreds
of people would gather around and listen to this and they would
get so excited and then when I'd go back weeks later or months
later, they'd say what is happening now in Ethiopia. Are we
going to beat Bihar, are we gong to beat Bangladesh or are we
going to beat Ethiopia in eradicating smallpox; and they'd get
so excited and the quality of work would improve tremendously.
Chris Vaniser: How were you received as a Caucasian woman working in that
area of India, which I am sure that most of the physicians you
were dealing with, I assume, were male?
Davida Coady: Right.
Chris Vaniser: At least most of the other people.
Davida Coady: I think fairly well-very well in fact. I think in India
there were no problems really. You know, I dressed appropriately
and all, and got my legs covered and all those things, and in
Bangladesh it was a little harder. If I went somewhere without
my husband, people would say well bring your husband next time,
and they didn't my traveling without him, and we'd often split
up and did different parts of the work. But in India there was
none of that. There was a village character in one of the
villages who wrote a song about me and evidently the chorus - he
was a man suffering from tertiary syphilis and was quite crazy -
the chorus was translated to me saying: "Dr. and Mrs. Coady is a
wonderful doctor, she's the best doctor in the whole world
because she carries herself like a doctor and she acts like a
doctor." So I thought that was very, very nice.
Chris Vaniser: Very nice-Yeah respectful. Did you have any special
challenges or events that happened when you were in that
Northern part of India that kind of stand out as very memorable
events during the smallpox?
Davida Coady: Just that it was terribly, terribly hot. We were there in
the pre-monsoon season and I don't remember anything really
frightening. Our driver and medical assistant, and many other
people were very kind of cautious when we first got there and
they - the person before us had made an error in trying to
vaccinate a woman - this is a male epidemiologist - without her
permission and the villagers had come very close to throwing him
down the well. So they told me, they lectured me, but after
about a week they said, "It is fine. We know you are not going
to cause any problems like that." But that always made me just a
little bit wary.
One thing we noticed was a - my having worked in Africa before
where people loved to get immunizations and loved to get
vaccinated; was that the Indians, they wanted some conversation
before they were vaccinated. They wanted an explanation and
their views of the goddess and her role in all this varied
really from village to village, and sometimes - in one village
they wanted us to come back next Tuesday because that's what the
goddess wanted us to do instead of vaccinating people then. I
think we finally agreed to do that, it was just easier, but many
times they would say, "No, the goddess doesn't want us
vaccinated;" and we'd sit down and go through all the
explanations and just at the point when we were convinced they
were never going to let us vaccinate anyone, they'd say, okay
now we understand that it's a disease and it's not a goddess and
please vaccinate us." I remember one elderly man, he said, "No,
I don't want to be vaccinated because I'm getting ready to go to
God;" and my husband looked him right in the eye and said, "I
really think God would like you better vaccinated;" and I was
just thinking "Oh my!" And the man said "Oh, alright fine," and
he said, "Please, please vaccinate me." So a lot of it was just
listening and realizing that nothing worked fast in India.
Chris Vaniser: Now did you speak Hindi or did you have a translator with
you?
Davida Coady: We had a translator. Our paramedical assistant was our
translator. I learnt a little bit of Hindi and just enough to
get around, just a little to ask where ask directions and where
people were, and of course the word for smallpox was
Bashanto[0:16:56] which is also the word for springtime; and I
relied a little bit less on my Hindi after one of our fellow
epidemiologists, a man from France whose name I forget; he got
very good at Hindi, but he spent a long time, he had a sprained
ankle at the time, walking to a village looking for - he'd asked
if there was any Bashanto and everybody said: yes, yes. "Where
is the person with smallpox?" And after he walked a long, long
distance he finally found this man out on the field. It turned
out that the man's name was Bashanto. So I was
[crosstalk0:17:57]
Chris Vaniser: A little bit more [crosstalk 0:17:56] after that about
your Hindi. Was your husband a physician as well, or in the
health field?
Davida Coady: No, my husband at that time was not, he was not a -
Chris Vaniser: But he was - he sounds like part of the team?
Davida Coady: Yeah, he helped.
Chris Vaniser: In terms of going out and-
Davida Coady: He liked to write and he was collecting information and
stories.
Chris Vaniser: Interesting. So then it sounds like soon after that you
went to Calcutta? Was that the same trip?
Davida Coady: Right, we came back to the United States for a couple of
months and then we went back and went to Calcutta.
Chris Vaniser: How did that differ from Gorakhpur?
Davida Coady: Well, we were in the city and Bengal was much more
sophisticated, and there was much less smallpox. I saw hundreds
and hundreds of cases of smallpox in Uttar Pradesh and many,
many ...[inaudible0:18:58]. We were doing the last of it and the
reward was being offered by that time and the amount of the
reward was going up, and we went around to different groups
asking them to help us. One of the interesting things was, we
went to see Mother Teresa to see if she would have her nuns help
us in looking for and reporting any smallpox; and Mother Teresa
like she always did - I went back and worked for her later
actually - she turned it around on us and she got us to agree to
bring our staff on our day off and vaccinate everybody in her
feeding lines; and our driver and our paramedical assistant were
just so thrilled to meet her and to be part of that, they took
their day off too, and we did that, so that was kind of fun.
Chris Vaniser: Did she also agree to have her nuns help with identifying
any cases and reporting them?
Davida Coady: Yes, yes they did. I can remember that they did. But then
in those times we spent a lot of our time with people coming to
us, being brought to us with everything from scabies to chicken
pox to hives, with people trying to tell us it was smallpox and
they wanted the reward. So I spent an awful lot of my time
saying no that was not smallpox; and it was interesting, one man
particularly who came to us; and I still have his little
advertisement. He was an Ayurvedic Doctor of some kind and he
had a little advertisement which I have still, with a picture
that he'd drawn of somebody with smallpox and he introduced
himself as a specialist in smallpox from a part of our district,
North of Calcutta, and he had a man whose scabs were just
falling off, or just forming I guess; and we said, "Why didn't
you bring him sooner," and he said, "Because he just ran out of
money," and we said, "Well, explain this." He said, "You see I
charge people when they come with the fever, I charge them and
they pay, I have a medicine to make the rash break out, I have a
medicine to make the macules..." - He knew the terms - "...the
macules form into papules, and the papules form into pustules,
and then for the scabs to form, and then for the scabs to fall
off and for the scars to go away. They come back and I sell them
each of these medicines. But he has run out of money, so I came
to get the reward." Then we talked with him further and he was
able to tell us every case of smallpox, maybe then 25, 30 cases
in that district, in that outbreak over the past two or three
months, and he was able to tell us everyone of them and who got
it from who and it corresponded exactly to the reports that we
had gotten from the health workers. So he knew the whole thing.
Chris Vaniser: But of course, he didn't have the vaccine. He was missing
that part he had medicine to make -
Davida Coady: He had no interest in the vaccine.
Chris Vaniser: That's right; it destroyed his business I guess.
Davida Coady: Right.
Chris Vaniser: How did you find the conditions?
Davida Coady: They were difficult. Gorakhpur: it was hard to eat; we ate
at the hotel where we stayed which was - and then later we found
a Chinese restaurant, but we didn't find that for about a month,
and we ate at the hotel and everything was so terribly, terribly
hot. I am used to hot food, but this was really, really hot. So
we would just try things. Of course, we couldn't read the menu
so we would point to things on other people's plates and they
would get those for us, and it was challenging, but we were
young. Life was easier in Calcutta, there was indoor plumbing
and -
Chris Vaniser: When you traveled up in Gorakhpur, were you out overnight
sometimes in the neighboring districts?
Davida Coady: No, we were always able to get back when we were in
Gorakhpur. In Calcutta we did, we had these four districts; we'd
stay in the districts, we found places to stay. In Gorakhpur we
never - [crosstalk 0:24:17].
Chris Vaniser: It was always maybe a long day trip, but you would always
get back. How about any problems with getting safe food, safe
water?
Davida Coady: We would find that we'd buy bottled water and Coca Cola,
and I think there was one time when we bought some cokes and it
was adulterated and we all got very sick.
Chris Vaniser: Any other events that stand out from your time in India?
Now you came back to the States before going back to Calcutta
and then [crosstalk0:25:01] from Bangladesh also?
Davida Coady: Then we went directly from Calcutta to Bangladesh. I know
it was before Christmas because we spent Christmas in
Bangladesh.
Chris Vaniser: Then, how was that in comparison to India?
Davida Coady: It was very different. In Bangladesh they didn't have the
structure. In India they had the structure, these Health Centers
and there was always somebody who was in charge that you could
work with and some of them were wonderful and some of them were
not at all interested; but at least there was a structure. In
Bangladesh we were in the North in Saidpur, which is a larger
Bihari City and which was good because they spoke Urdu which I
could understand; I never really got hold of the Bengali
language at all, and the Urdu I could understand from the Hindi
that I knew. There was no structure, we just had to do the work
and hire the vaccinators and find the epidemics and it was much
harder and you had the feeling that you weren't teaching that
much. You were just trying to get the cases and get the work
done.
Chris Vaniser: When you say you had do the work, it was actually you and
your team that was more - not the Bengalis that were there as
counterparts?
Davida Coady: Right. We didn't really have counterparts, we had
vaccinators that we trained and hired to work for us.
Chris Vaniser: What year was that, when you were in Bangladesh?
Davida Coady: That would have been '75; in late December '74 and then
into '75.
Chris Vaniser: So I guess - it sounds like you also had just an
incredible time as part of the Smallpox Program and you had
brought to it lot of experience, international experience,
specially from Africa and other places, Guatemala and other
international locations that you had worked in. How did the
smallpox experience affect your future career and your
involvement in Public Health?
Davida Coady: I became very, very convinced that the idea of eradicating
infectious diseases was very doable and feasible and helpful and
everything right about it; and I have been very disappointed
that other diseases have not been eradicated. I thought surely
the lessons would be learned. We had this wonderful seminar this
morning that I thought surely guinea worm and polio and measles
and some of the others would be gone by now with the lessons we
learned, and I think people made such valiant efforts to promote
the principles. Dr. Henderson and Dr. Foege, Dr. Foster; and all
of them; they had such a wonderful plan to really use all these
principles to eradicate other diseases and it's been very
disappointing that there wasn't the political will and the
finances - the political will to do it.
Chris Vaniser: [cosstalk0:29:05] the difference perhaps?
Davida Coady: Yeah; and I think the idea that an international effort
like that could work, has kept me going through some hard times
and some of the battles I fought are harder than that and you
have more foes, there weren't too many people against smallpox
eradication. There were a few people who made money off
smallpox. I remember one very overweight politician in India
railing at me one day, when we drove up with the smallpox
vaccines - with the smallpox van; and he said then: Why don't we
foreigners and smallpox people go home and let our people die of
smallpox before they starve to death from overpopulation; and
this man was fat and he was eating a plate of food, and he was
one of the few people I ever met that said: eradication of
smallpox is not a good thing to do. It just seemed so clear;
one of the battles that I fight today in my hometown in
Berkeley, is we are fighting the tobacco industry very hard and
the pharmaceutical industry and the illegal drug industry; and I
work in the addiction field now and you have these giants, the
Alcoholic Beverage Industry and the Tobacco Industry, and all
the rest, are such hard foes that I look longingly at the time
when I was fighting smallpox which didn't have those big
interests against you.
Chris Vaniser: [crosstalk 0:31:01] with lots of money to -
Davida Coady: But it has given me - I had training in epidemiology, but
the smallpox work gave me the field experience to see what
epidemiology could really do, and it of course greatly
influenced my teaching at UCLA - but really the way I look at
everything. I am in the addiction field now because I looked
around my own community with the tools I learned as an
epidemiologist and said: The biggest cause of homelessness and
crime and misery and violence and child abuse in my community is
the substance abuse, which is not being treated. So that's why I
made that decision.
Chris Vaniser: That's a pretty big decision to have ended up - it sounds
like you had spent time in international health and trained as a
pediatrician. Correct?
Davida Coady: Right.
Chris Vaniser: And now you are working in smoking and addiction control
because of lessons learned through the smallpox eradication.
Davida Coady: Right.
Chris Vaniser: Well, thank you very much again for sharing your stories.
This sounds like it must have just been - again an incredible
experience.
Davida Coady: It was a peak experience; it is something that I just
wouldn't trade for anything. I am just so happy I was part of
that.
Chris Vaniser: And it sounds like you made quite a few friends along the
way that are legends in their own right in the area of Public
Health and -
Davida Coady: I did.
Chris Vaniser: Not just smallpox, but Public Health in general.
Davida Coady: Right; and I just loved India and Bangladesh, but
particularly India. I loved working there. I loved the people. I
love to look now at pictures of Indians and see that nobody
under 30 has got smallpox scars. That just chokes me up.
Chris Vaniser: There's nothing else that you can really say that of-that
has been so eradicated and know that you had a part in all of
that. It was just a huge accomplishment. Thank you again.
Davida Coady: Thank you.
[End of audio - 0:33:21]
</pre>
Player
html for embedded player to stream video content
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZazTD1mKMlY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
interviews
motion pictures
moving image
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-07-11
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/16rfh
emory:16rfh
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
7197240000 bytes
video/x-dv
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Zahbhiser, Chris (Interviewer); CDC
Coady, Davida (Interviewee)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Centers for Disease Control
Reunion of Southeast Asia and East Africa Smallpox Workers (2008 : Atlanta, Georgia)
Title
A name given to the resource
COADY, DAVIDA
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Davida Coady was a field epidemiologist working in the Smallpox Eradication Program in India from 1974-1975
Subject
The topic of the resource
Smallpox Eradication
Epidemiologist
Language
A language of the resource
English
-
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/1b69668fd433228d7257c8f5d9a17d22.jpg
4f42519dab2c70d3d3646f95bd737664
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/2721a24d7815c916703b202fa7a95885.pdf
2b23c7214e5cad978f34e1027ba3b779
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smallpox
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="landing">
<p>Smallpox disease was declared eradicated in 1980, the result of a collaborative global campaign. To date, it is the only disease affecting humans to be eradicated from the world. Global eradication of smallpox ranks among the great achievements of humankind. Gone, through determined human effort, is a disease which has brought death to millions, frequently altering the course of history, and traveling through the centuries to every part of the world. </p>
<p>The vital contributions made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are highlighted. Official government correspondence, meeting transcripts, policy statements, surveillance reports and mortality statistics tell a part of that story. Adding depth to these traditional archives are the personal stories of the public health pioneers who worked tirelessly on the frontlines of the smallpox eradication campaign.</p>
<p>The links above connect you to a database of oral histories, photographs, documents, and other media.</p>
<p>Use of this information is free, but please see <strong>“About this Site”</strong> for guidance on how to acknowledge the sources of the information used</p>
</div>
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound.
<pre><strong>
Interview Transcript
</strong>
INTERVIEW
Audio File: Tim Miner Audio File
Transcribed: January 28, 2009
Interviewer: My name is Ted Tolavoil. I'm a senior undergraduate at
Emory University. We are at the CDC today interviewing Tim Miner and
today's date is April 2nd, 2008 and the interviewee has given
permission for this taping. First of all Tim if I could have you
introduce yourself. Who are you and tell me a little bit about your
background?
Interviewee: Okay. My name is Howard Gordon Miner but I go by the
nickname Tim and I've had that nickname from birth because when I was
born there were already two other Howards in the family and they
needed something to differentiate me from the rest of the Howards so I
got the moniker Tim. I grew up in Detroit Michigan and left in
nineteen seventy. I taught for a couple of years in the inner city in
Detroit. I went to Swaziland in the peace corps in nineteen seventy
and I'd just like to say [Foreign Dialect] which is Siswati for I'm
very happy to see you now. So, I do recall some of the languages that
I picked up along the way. I taught in Swaziland for a year until I
discovered that we were taking jobs away from unemployed Swazi
teachers so I mentioned to my peace corps director at the time I would
like to go and do something else. I wasn't real enamored with
teaching anyway and I certainly didn't want to un-employ a Swazi
teacher.
So because I spoke French they sent me to Zaire with the smallpox
eradication program but they almost sent me to Morocco as an
agricultural photographer so I could be in a whole different career by
now if had I not gone to Zaire. In Zaire the smallpox program was
headed by Dr. Pierre Ziegler and when I landed in Kinshasa I went
first to the peace corps office and signed in and did all the
paperwork and met all the people. And then went over to the WHO
office in Kinshasa and had this lengthy conversation in French with
Dr. Ziegler and I realized that I really needed to get up to speed on
my French rather quickly. And so I did and he showed me how to give
an immunization and he had a clinic there once a week.
So there was a lady that came in and you know you have the bifurcated
needle and you take the arm and kind of squeeze the flesh and rest
your wrist on the arm and you just jab it a couple of times. So he
said, "Why are you doing that? Tell me exactly what you're doing so
that I know that you understand what I told you." So, I'm giving her
the immunization and you're supposed to just prick the skin a little
bit until there is a trace of blood. Well for those who speak French,
the word for blood and the word for monkeys sound about the same. So
as I was explaining what I was doing I said, "You just prick the skin
until you see a trace monkeys." And everybody just broke out laughing
because they couldn't understand why and the lady wondered what kind
of vaccination I was giving here that she'd get a trace of monkeys on
her skin. So, that was my introduction to the immunization program
there.
I went to my field station which was then in northern Shaba, ex-
Katanga Province and there was another peace corps volunteer there,
Ken Bloom. And so we did a [inaudible 03.39] in the field first and
then came back and then he left and left me there but I'm getting a
little bit ahead of myself. While I was in Kinshasa with Dr. Ziegler
he said, "All right you're peace corps volunteer but we don't want you
to conduct yourself as a volunteer, tell anybody that you're a
volunteer or live like a volunteer." I don't know what his
preconceptions of volunteers were but I listened intently. And he
said, "To make sure you don't live like a volunteer we're going to
supplement your $75 a month income from the peace corps with an
additional $400 from WHO." I said, "Works for me," so went out there
in the field and took my station.
I had three Land Rovers, an office, a furnished two bedroom apartment
and a staff of four. So I was the [inaudible 04.35] to keep the team
leader of a epidemiological investigation team and we were in the
field about twenty eight days a month, back at the home base only two
days a month because I like to travel and be in the field and there
wasn't a lot to do at home base. And my African staff liked to be
gone more so that they could be making money and they wouldn't be home
spending it and having relatives come around and so and so forth as it
was explained to me. So we were in town maybe two days to file a
report and I had a two way radio so I could talk to Kinshasa. And
there was Mr. Ali an Egyptian that ran the radio and I was talking to
him and I said needed this piece of equipment to repair a Land Rover.
And he said, "But what is it?" And I said, "Well I know what it is in
French." I'd been so immersed in French I forgot, even though I grew
up in Detroit, what this particular part was. And so I said, "Well
I'll tell you in French and if you know what it is, you tell me what
it is in English because I forgotten." So, he did that and we got the
parts and went on.
I was in Zaire at a particularly historical moment when Mobutu Sese
Seko wa za Banga, the president of Zaire at the time was just
initiating his authenticité campaign. So he renamed the Congo River
the Zaire River, renamed the country Zaire, renamed the currency Zaire
and told all Zairewa's, all citizens that they had to change their
names from Christian names to African names. So I talked to my team
and I said well - after I learned all their names I said, "Well you're
going to have to tell me what you're African name is and then tell me
whether you - how you want me to address you." And so that worked out
fine. That wasn't a problem. When it came time for me to leave, when
I went to Zaire I had to give another year to peace corps. Normally
it's two years but since I had done one in Swaziland I went to Zaire
for two years and part of the way through that I got home leave and I
went to Geneva. And on a Sunday afternoon I went to the WHO
headquarters and walked into D. A. Henderson's office and he was there
on a Sunday afternoon. And I said, "Well D.A. I'd like - you know I've
done this work in Zaire, I'd like to have a job. I'm going to be
leaving the peace corps, I'd like to have a job with WHO if you think
that's possible in another country." And he said, "Well, I'll look
into it."
Four weeks later I got back to Kinshasa and I was offered a job with
WHO in Bangladesh but I had to go back to my post and turn over all
the operations to the African staff at the time which I enjoyed doing
because they were certainly capable of doing everything that I did.
And it became a philosophy of mine in working in a host country to
always whenever possible to have a host country counterpart working
with me. And try to - I would try to build as much infrastructure or
leave more than what I came with and that has been one of my standards
that I've had. So I left the post, went to Kinshasa to visit peace
corps and I couldn't find the office. The office had changed
locations. So I found the office, walked into the office and they
weren't the same people that were there. So I said - introduced who I
was and said I'm ready to check out and that time John McEnany who I
think also has done some work in smallpox was there and he said, "Oh
yes, Tim Miner. I think I've seen your name somewhere. Where have
you been? You've been gone for about two years." So all the staff,
the office, everything had changed, all the people so we signed out of
there and I headed off to Zaire via Nairobi - to Bangladesh via
Nairobi.
In Bangladesh, let me see, I - let me back up a little bit and tell
you a brief story in Zaire about an immunization campaign. We used
(pedajets) but we also used the bifurcated needles. Because the city
of Kalemie on Lake Tanganyika was bordered on a rebel occupied area
and we had some reports of smallpox in there but we really couldn't go
into that area to investigate, what we decided to do, Ken Bloom and I
was to hold a mass immunization campaign in that town or a little bit
outside of town with the hopes that the people from that area would
come in and be immunized. So that was my first mass vaccination
campaign and we called Kinshasa and had them send us immunization
certificates and some additional (pedajets) and vaccines and things
and we held a mass campaign and that was really exciting because we
had - the local person said everybody should come and you will get a
certificate and they may be checking people to make sure that they had
a certificate, that they had an immunization.
So we had large crowds of people and we had to spread this out over
about ten days to get everybody vaccinated but that was - that was a
pretty exciting thing. And there's another city we visited on Lake
Tanganyika and it was a mission there and I tried to stay at the
missions because they had the best food, the best accommodations and a
variety of beverages and the best conversation that was available at
that time and if I were to fall ill I'd been in pretty good hands
because there's nurses nearby and so on. At this one mission there
was a Belgian Father, actually he was a German Father and he tanned
hides. So I said well can you make me some shoes because my store
bought American shoes didn't last very long and were getting kind of
threadbare. He said sure. So I had him make a pair of boots a year
for me and that's about how long they lasted but there was also - he
tanned some other hides. I bought, and this was before
environmentalists and so on and so forth so I had an alligator hide, a
python skin that was probably about thirty feet long and a puff adder.
And I sent those home to the States where my nieces and nephews used
them as show and tell in schools and they were a big hit.
So I'm back in - headed for Bangladesh now and I'm in Nairobi, through
Nairobi to New Delhi and got an orientation in New Delhi and then went
to Bangladesh. When I arrived in Bangladesh Stan Foster was there,
Stan Music was there, Neilton Arnt from - Stan Foster and Music are
from CDC, Nielton was Brazilian with WHO. Nick Ward, Dr. Ward is a
physician from U.K. and then there was myself and I was the youngest,
only non physician and I was the only one that wasn't married. So
guess where I ended up working in Bangladesh? The most remote river
line areas of the country. I had Barisal, Patuakhali and Faridpur and
there was a hospital ship that the Germans had donated to Bangladesh a
couple of years before I arrived and Stan had arranged for a bunch of
-- they were moped like or vespa like Honda -- motor scooters to be
put on all over the deck. And he said, "I want you to get on that
boat and go down there and eradicate smallpox from those three
provinces down there. I said, "Is that all? Any other instructions?"
And so I did, got on the boat, introduced myself to the captain and I
was able to supplement the pay of the crew nominally, nominally for
the extra expenses I incurred and what they did.
And so we towed a speedboat. This was - this ship was probably forty
five, fifty feet long and had a draught of about three feet,
three/four feet. It was fairly shallow and I had a forward cabin. And
we had our immunization team on there and we went down to Barisal
first and docked and stayed at a mission there for a couple of days.
Met with the chief medical officers and then went on down to Faridpur.
I taught my self Bengali, smallpox Bengali and to this day when I
speak with Bengalis I meet in Atlanta and elsewhere I've been informed
that I speak sort of like a villager or a fisher person not like a
university professor which is fine because those are the people with
whom I communicated all the time and didn't have any problems doing
that. I was able to conduct a smallpox investigation by using my
Bengali. All right an interesting - our team was made up of myself
and we had a combination of Muslim and Hindu staff on the team.
Vaccinators and interpreters and there was a chief and so on and
everybody got along fine and it was just a wonderful experience. We
had a speedboat driver as well and so we would get down in the morning
into the speedboat and go off and investigate the reports that we had.
And one time we were coming back rather late at night and there was a
full moon and we were in the Brahmaputra which is the main river in
Bangladesh. Then the river line areas there are a lot of channels and
we were out in the main river and we were going rather fast. And the
next thing we knew we were out of the boat, head over heels in the
river but we weren't in the water. We had hit was is called a mud
flab and in a mud - when the - you have a mud flab in the water and
you can't tell because the water is just barely over the mud and the
mud in the dark or in the moonlight reflects - seems to be water. So
we hit that and the motor went up and all of us were thrown out of the
boat in the middle of the river on this mud flab, covered in mud and
when we got - regained our senses we were just laughing hysterically
at the absurdity of the situation. We put our stuff back in the boat
and pushed off and got back to the speed boat.
One particular investigation that stands out to me is I went to a
village and the villagers - this young man and some other people took
me to this brand new hut. I mean it was just brand new, it had just
been built and they said the patient is in there. And they led me
inside and on the mat on the floor -- there was no furniture or
anything else, there was just this mat on the floor in the middle of
the hut -- was a person under a cover, a cloth, completely covered.
And I was prepared to take the cover off and examine and see if it's
smallpox and they just - they took the whole cover off themselves and
there was this young woman covered with smallpox from head to toe of
the confluent. There wasn't a space on this person that there wasn't
a pox and so I knew right away what it was and thanked them and
stepped out. And this young man starts explaining to me that this is
his new wife, his new bride. And I said, "Gosh I feel very badly
about that. I know that vaccinators had been in this village before
would you - how come she wasn't vaccinated?" Was she away or
something?" He said, "No." He said, "I hid her from the vaccinators
because I didn't want her to have a smallpox scar on her skin." I
said, "Oh I see." And you can't be judgmental or demonstrable,
demonstrative or emotional at times like that. You have to really
kind of step back emotionally a little bit from that. So I said "Well
what would you do differently?" He said, "Well, I'm looking for
another wife and my next wife will be vaccinated."
But what struck me was that it was preventable and here was this young
person, a young woman in just the beginning of her life with so much
in front of her to look forward to, to being a mother, a grandmother,
a husband, a sister and so on. And her life ended in such a tragic
way. So I had several of these reminders throughout Bangladesh. I
might add also that while working in Zaire I hadn't actually seen a
real case of smallpox. It had been eradicated but we were monitoring
it at the time. So Bangladesh was the first time that I had seen live
smallpox and...
Interviewer: What was your first impression when you arrived in
Bangladesh?
Interviewee: Well, when I arrived in Bangladesh and the subcontinent, I
was impressed by the density of population. I had never seen, apart
from a market in Africa, I had never seen so many people. I once did
an experiment driving on the road trying to count ten seconds, just
one and two and - up to the number ten, looking out the side of my
window to see if there was ever any space where there wasn't evidence
of human beings being there. So the land was either occupied by a
house or a structure of some kind or it was planted. That was it.
There was no vacant land, no land in Bangladesh that was not touched
by human hands. We also because of the density when I was there, we
had confined a lot of the smallpox cases and isolated them and we were
in the process of eradicating them when the government tore down the
basties or the slums of Dhaka. Just went in with bulldozers and it
acted as a centrifuge spinning out cases of smallpox all over the
country reintroducing smallpox into areas that had recently been freed
of the cases. So that - our numbers of cases went sky rocketing again
so that it was little disheartening.
Another time I was down in the river line areas and Stan Foster was
up in Dhaka and I think I was at the furthest most remote place at the
time on the ship and I got on the radio and talked to Stan. And what
we were trained to do was to investigate the cases of smallpox and
find out who had been visiting and what were there names and where did
they go and where did they live and so on and so forth. So as a
matter of routine I gave Stan this information about who this person
was and the name and when they visited and so and so forth and not
really expecting that you know all these millions and millions he's
going to find him but he did. He went to the address and he asked for
the person and he found the person and immunized the person and was
able to prevent the next generation of smallpox from that person
having visited there. So anything is possible.
We lived with the people in the host country. I lived on the ship, I
lived with Bengalis all the time, I rarely saw another European.
There was some care people that I would meet on occasion but I learned
the language and the culture and they embraced me and I embraced them
figuratively and it just worked very well. And I can't imagine
eradicating smallpox with a kind of a visit and come out and then
visit and come out type of approach. It didn't occur to me to do it
any other way other than to go to a respective country and live there
and work there and learn about the people and the culture and the
religion and so on. I worked for six months in the river line areas
on the hospital ship and was fairly able to get smallpox under control
there. And then I was transferred to the north, Jamalpur and went
from a boat to a motorcycle and that's when I met after I'd been
working up there getting things organized, I met Steven Jones. Dr.
Jones was up there and Marty Litz and Peter Hargrove and these are
people I met and known since then. And we had people come from CDC, a
lot of consultants as well, short term consultants for three months or
six month stints.
And I was having breakfast with one of the fellows and it usually
consists of a chapatti and some eggs or something like that. And he
said, "Well how do you manage with all of these poor raggedy kids and
poor people and people kind of on their last leg and they look very
unhealthy." And I said, "Yes I never know when I walk past someone
coming back in the afternoon whether they'll be alive or dead," and
that has happened many times. And I said, "Well you know, it's not
that I'm unsympathetic or that I don't care but I know well enough
that I can do one of two things. I can either devote my life to
trying to alleviate the pain and the suffering and feeding and
clothing of less fortunate people or I can do my job and eradicate -
working to eradicate smallpox and that will benefit them. At least
they won't die of smallpox." Well since then I've learned that
Bangladesh has done quite well economically. Many of the clothes that
I buy today are made in Bangladesh that weren't made in Bangladesh at
the time and I understand that they are doing much better than when I
was there at the time. So that's heartening to know.
Interviewer2: In the book that's been written about smallpox in India,
the author postulates that the only reason that smallpox was
eradicated was by compulsion.
Interviewee: Yeah. Smallpox could not have been eradicated by
compulsion. People all over the world cannot be coerced for long to
do something that they don't want to do themselves, that they don't
want to do willingly. And I relied on reason and understanding and
cultural sensitivity when explaining the benefits of immunizations and
if somebody that chose not to then so be it. I felt very disappointed
because I knew the preventive benefits of that but nobody was ever
forced. And I had people approach me afterwards as I was leaving and
say, "Come we've decided we want you to do some immunizing." We also
out of respect for a variety of cultures engaged female vaccinators
and that worked very well and so that we were able to honor the
customs of the country and have ladies vaccinate ladies and so I think
we did much better that way. But in Zaire and in Bangladesh and in
Somalia where I worked there was never any thought of coercing people.
Governments may issue declarations that there's a smallpox
vaccination day or you should immunized for smallpox and so on but
even when we were doing the mass campaign and there were police
officials organizing the lines of people, there was nobody - they were
there voluntarily and they recognized the benefits of the immunization
as opposed to having the disease. So that's an important point to
clarify.
And by way of this tape I want to thank all of the host country
nationals that have kept me safe over the years and to this day when I
travel overseas. They're very protective and solicitous and very good
people to be working with and I did not eradicate smallpox. I worked
with hundreds, hundreds or thousands of Bengalis and Zairewa's and
Somalis to do that and so it is - it's to their credit. They're the
ones that are responsible for our success because if you show
sensitivity and you show honesty and a true spirit, they'll go with
you anywhere, any time, day or night, seven days a week to carry out
the work. So this is something that I want the people that will view
this tape in the future to know. That this was truly a global effort
of people all over the world coming together for this - for this one
cause and I don't think there had - apart from World Wars and even in
World Wars there wasn't all the countries coming together. Some were
in conflict but in this particular case to achieve the eradication of
smallpox it's the first time in human history that a disease has been
eradicated by human beings. That human beings have rid themselves of
this pest that goes back to recorded history. And so I really would
like to see something like that happen again because it's - they were
really heady days and really wonderful, wonderful things to
experience.
After I finished in the northern in Bangladesh in the motorcycle,
last six months I came down to Dhaka to be the finance officer and we
had as many as seventy five or a hundred short term volunteers in
Bangladesh at one time and everybody had to have money and everybody
had to have a system of accounting for it. So based on my year and a
half and handling and accounting of money I developed a spreadsheet.
Now, we call it a spreadsheet but we didn't have Excel at that time.
You had to draw something by hand and then had people look at it and
review it and then it went to the printer and then they sent you a
proof and then you looked at that to make sure it was all right
because they were going to print a million copies of it so it better
be right. And so I developed this spreadsheet about yea big and
people would put a carbon paper. That's a - not too many people know
what that is but anyway it allows you to write down one side of the
paper and it will come through on the next page. So that's what we
used and I was in charge of training the volunteers, the short term
consultants that come in to account for this system. Very simple
system. You get a receipt, make sure it has the date, write down what
it was and put the number in sequence of what it was and put that
number on your spreadsheet and just write down what it was and your
beginning balance and then you're ending balance. That's all you have
to do nothing more than that. And we gave them a briefcase of money
and - of taka and they went off.
And while we had these people out there with their briefcases full of
money containing smallpox and what not, the government decided to have
a demonetization effort. And they demonetized all the money and said
all the money had to be returned to the bank and they'd give you a
receipt for it because they're going to issue new currency. Well
needless to say that put our campaign in a bit of a bind because
people then couldn't get paid and so on. So our people had to go to
the banks wherever they were in the field, turn in the money, get a
receipt and we got a special dispensation from the president of the
country and the head of the treasury that said we would be given -
among the first ones to be given the new currency as soon as we turned
in the old money so that we could keep the campaign going. So there
were little exciting moments like this that happened from time to time
and we were working with nationalities. All nationalities were
involved and as you know the Americans and the Russians and I forget
if it was originally the Russians idea and the Americans joined it or
what it was but we got WHO to accept this program. And so in
Bangladesh we were working occasionally with Russians and they liked
our cigarettes and we liked their vodka so we'd you know trade and
that stuff but they thought that were working for the CIA and we knew
they were working for the KGB. I mean there just wasn't any way
they'd be let out of the country if they weren't. None of us were CIA
but you know you couldn't change their mind on that.
So we worked with a lot of different nationalities and one character
in particular stands out, Dr. Larry Brilliant. And he's a physician
from Detroit and went to study with a guru in India and the guru said,
"You're going to eradicate smallpox from India. You're going to join
the smallpox eradication program,." and he went to D.A. and said, "I
need a job." And the Nicole Grasset who's a French woman physician
who headed the regional office of smallpox campaign in Delhi said, "No
we really don't have anything for you." Went back to the guru and the
guru said go back. Anyway he ended up working in the smallpox
eradication program and was instrumental with others in getting Tata
Industries to put in money and to organize their workers and have -
support eradication efforts there. Now Tata Industries as you know
just bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company so gives you
an idea of how the world has changed.
When I left Bangladesh I had decided that I needed - global public
health was the love of my life. It was what I felt I was born to do.
I wasn't going back to teaching. I really couldn't do anything else
after having done something this exciting so I went back to Michigan
via Asia and signed up at the University of Michigan School of Public
Health to do an MPH. Well, who should I find there but Larry
Brilliant as my academic advisor and Steve Jones is a student there as
well. So I tell you, you just can't get away from these people. But
I had to delay my admission to the University of Michigan. I had to
call them up and said, "Well I have to go to the Cameroon." Stan
Foster wanted me to go to Cameroon to do an assessment of the whole
country's health system for the program that was to follow on from
smallpox campaign which was the expanded program on immunization. So
I designed a questionnaire, visited the whole country, every health
facility in the whole country and left the report there and then went
back to the University of Michigan to start my degree.
While I was there I met Dave Hayman who was assigned there and he was
taking over after Bernie Gayer that had left. And so I talked a
little bit with Dave and showed him the report and he thanked me and
we went off. And two years later, I forget what country I was in,
maybe I was in the Philippines at the time, I got this note from David
Hayman thanking me for this report. That it was so comprehensive that
it has been the principal reference document for them in establishing
their expanded program on immunization. And again that was made
possible by traveling and working with and the support of the
Cameroonians. I had a small staff and a driver that we went around to
do that. That it's nothing I did by myself. So it's good to know
that what you do, do works out quite well.
Okay. A little bit about smallpox in Somalia. I was at the
University of Michigan and Michigan liked the idea of a student coming
in with the experience that I had and in the summer times working as a
consultant. So I was invited to go and work in Somalia as a
consultant for three year four months and I was assigned to a small
town of Marka which is just south of Mogadishu. And Somalia was very
safe at the time and there wasn't any problems, anything like there is
now and because of the lack of availability of food we were on sea
rations. So we had little Bunsen burner and we opened the cans and
cooked our food. In the town of Marka lived the world's last case of
smallpox and I've forgotten his name but he - we were doing a scab
survey so I needed to interview. The word went out that I needed to
interview anybody that had pox or of course scabs. And he showed up
and introduced himself and I knew who he was and he said, "You know
I've been interviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The
London Times and The Straits Times and newspapers all over the world
by these reporters and they pay me handsomely for the interviews.
What do you have for me?" And I said, "Well I don't work for a fancy
newspaper, I'm not a reporter and all I have is you know a couple of
cans of this sea rations that I have, a couple of aspirin and maybe
some malaria tablets but to tell you the truth that's all I have."
With a little bit of pause he said, "Okay. We'll do it." So I
interviewed him and that was a telling moment. Another instance Dave
- not Dave - Peter Kraskow and I went -- he was working there as well
-- went and lived with the nomads and their camels for about a week.
And we did some blood sticks for antibody levels in neonates and I did
a paper at the University of Michigan on those findings. And it was
really enjoyable. Whenever I go to a country I really like to be with
the people and learn of their customs and certainly their language
which is a beginning to opening doors to their culture. I always try
and learn just a few words of a language and in Somalia there were no
smallpox cases at the time but we almost lost a couple of people. I
remember one time coming back to a base camp that we had with some
officers and things, finding Peter Kraskow on the floor of the
lavatory. He had passed out so I got him back up and we got him
healthy again and that was all right but Steve Fitzgerald who was
working in the north -- I forget the name of the districts, were way,
way in the north there -- almost died of dehydration. He had a bad
case of diarrhea and all that he and his driver could do is pull off
by the side of the road and underneath the tree and he had some re-
hydration salts and some purified water and so the driver nursed Steve
back to health enough so that he could get back to Mogadishu and
continue his work.
Interviewer2: I think we could go on all afternoon with this Howard.
Interviewee: We could
Interviewer2: [Inaudible 40.12] finish off with...
Interviewer: What this means or how it has changed me or...
Interviewer: Exactly, yeah.
Interviewee: Okay.
Interviewer2: I think you have pretty much told us what it's done for
you.
Interviewee: Right. In fact it has changed my life. Just a couple of
sentences. When I had dinner with Ken Bloom and his wife Lois who
also helped with the eradication program in Bangladesh and we ran into
them in Boston many years ago, they had children at the time, my wife
and I didn't. They said, "Well if you had children it's going to
change your life forever," and I didn't quite know what they were
talking about until we had children and it will change your life
forever. And it's how I would attribute my work and experience with
the smallpox eradication program. It has changed my life, changed my
life forever. I wouldn't trade any of it, I wouldn't do any of it - I
would do it all over again about the same way that I had in the past
but it's just a rare opportunity. And when I'm back and I meet with
people and tell them a little bit about that I make an effort to thank
them for their contributions to the programs because they're tax
payers and it's rare that a taxpayer really has any kind of connection
with what's going on overseas and how their tax dollars are being
spent overseas. So I try and make an effort to that to bring them
into the activity of it themselves. I'm grateful for the opportunity.
Interviwer2: That was a great interview. It truly was.
</pre>
Player
html for embedded player to stream video content
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VIKcPkaZ0Kk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
interviews
motion pictures
moving image
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-04-02
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/15pjn
emory:15pjn
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
9037560000 bytes
video/x-dv
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tolavoil, Ted (Interviewer); Emory University
Miner, Tim (Interviewee); CDC
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Centers for Disease Control
Reunion of Southeast Asia and East Africa Smallpox Workers (2008 : Atlanta, Georgia)
Title
A name given to the resource
MINER, HOWARD "TIM"
Description
An account of the resource
Tim Miner was a Peace Corps volunteer assigned to the Smallpox Eradication Program in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and then later Bangladesh. Tim recounts many tales from the field and how this experience has influenced his life.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Smallpox Eradication
Language
A language of the resource
English
-
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/39ed46c91bdb1476732b08e5f2e4c3e6.JPG
32687499f0714d9ee0066f9c36569ca1
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/e0f226bf37f678c446589add4fd0fc1e.pdf
0f1d2df5de2ded7fa0b2ae8b01ef0733
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smallpox
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="landing">
<p>Smallpox disease was declared eradicated in 1980, the result of a collaborative global campaign. To date, it is the only disease affecting humans to be eradicated from the world. Global eradication of smallpox ranks among the great achievements of humankind. Gone, through determined human effort, is a disease which has brought death to millions, frequently altering the course of history, and traveling through the centuries to every part of the world. </p>
<p>The vital contributions made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are highlighted. Official government correspondence, meeting transcripts, policy statements, surveillance reports and mortality statistics tell a part of that story. Adding depth to these traditional archives are the personal stories of the public health pioneers who worked tirelessly on the frontlines of the smallpox eradication campaign.</p>
<p>The links above connect you to a database of oral histories, photographs, documents, and other media.</p>
<p>Use of this information is free, but please see <strong>“About this Site”</strong> for guidance on how to acknowledge the sources of the information used</p>
</div>
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound.
<pre><strong>
Interview Transcript
</strong>
This is an interview with Jeannie Lythcott on July 17, 2006, at the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, about her
experience and involvement with the West African Smallpox Eradication
Project. The interview is being conducted as a part of a reunion marking
the 40th anniversary of the launch of the program. The interviewer is David
Sencer.
Sencer: Jeannie, do you want to tell me a little bit about your early
years? Where were you born, what were your parents like?
Lythcott: I was born in Leeds, in Yorkshire, England, and I was born in
Leeds because my mom had to go to the hospital. I was the only 1
of her 5 children who had to be delivered in a hospital.
We grew up in a little village called Rye Hill, partway
between Leeds and Sheffield, a coal-mining town. My dad was the
only child of coal miners, and he won a scholarship to go to the
local grammar school, but his parents wouldn't pay the fee-what
would be maybe a dollar, now-to go to that school. And so he was
down in the mine at 14.
He took himself to night school. He was drafted in World
War II. He got in the Royal Signals Corps, and when he got home,
he went to college on a program for servicemen. He became a
science teacher and grew to become the headmaster of the only
school in which he taught. So education for Dad was absolutely
prime.
Mom had gone to the local high school, and so they were
both incredibly bright folks, and with 5 children.
I was born in 1939, at the beginning of World War II, and
some of my earliest memories are about gas masks and being
evacuated. You know, bombs were dropped on Leeds.
I grew up speaking Yorkshire, and our teachers spent a
good 12 years trying to have us approximate the Queen 's
English. This is how Yorkshire sounds. I'm going to give you a
Yorkshire toast: [toast in Yorkshire, which Dr. Sencer can't
understand]
About 6% of students went to university in those days. I applied
for and was accepted to Majesty University. Because our family
was so poor, I got a scholarship from the government as a result
of the 1944 Education Act. The government paid every penny for
me-bus fare from home, food, everything-to go to university. If
that had not been the case, I couldn't have gone.
I taught in England for a couple of years and then decided
that I wanted to go around the world, knowing somehow that my
experience of education was limited by the British system. So my
thought was that I would teach in former British colonies, where
some things would be recognizable. And at that time, David, I
was going to end up this grand tour of the globe in America,
that being the far end of the spectrum. And after that, I was
going to go home and become headmistress of a school for
girls.
I began in Ghana. I arrived in August of 1962. George
Lythcott and his 4 teenage children, ages 12 to16, had arrived
in Accra with an American team the month before I got there. He
was there as Deputy Director of a medical research team to help
Ghana build a national health institute manned by Ghanaian
scientists and molded after NIH [National Institutes of Health].
We lived very close to each other. I met the family on
September 9, about a month after I arrived, and we became very,
very close very quickly. It's amazing.
George had to go back to the United States in October or
November of that year. Three of the children, Ruthie, George,
and Mike, were in boarding school in Achimota, so they would be
taken care of while he was gone. The youngest one, Steven, was
going to a day school, an American international school.
So I went to see George the night before he was to leave
for 9 weeks to go back to the United States. His household goods
hadn't yet arrived from America. We were relative strangers, you
understand. I sat there in his house helping him to pack his
bag, and he kept giving me money. He gave me 3 blank, signed
checks just in case anything happened to his children. I mean,
his trust in me from the start, it was amazing when I think
about it.
And so we worked side by side. I was there to teach
physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics to girls who were
given a scholarship. They were bypassing secondary school and
being prepared for a degree nursing program, which was unusual
in 1962. So that's what I was doing there, and continued to do,
until December 1965.
Kwame Nkrumah [the first Prime Minister of Ghana] had
fallen into disfavor with the American government, and as a
result of some of the things that had happened, the United
States decided to pull out most of George's team. There were 22
scientists of different disciplines there. The United States
decided to pull most of them out as a political statement, but
the Ghanaian scientist with whom they'd been working made a plea
to the American Ambassador at the time to say, "Can't we keep a
scientist-to-scientist relationship?" And so George stayed with
1 technician.
But I had upset the Ghanese government, so my contract was not
renewed in 1965.
Sencer: How did you upset them?
Lythcott: In the summer of '65, those who taught in this pre-nursing
program said that, for the first time, they were willing to
leave as a group (they were very close friends) to go on
vacation because they felt that they could leave the college in
my hands. We were on vacation, and they felt that they could
leave the administrative details to me and they would come back
at the beginning of school.
Around this time, we had administered an entrance exam to
over 2,000 girls from all over Ghana. We had announced in the
newspaper when the exam would be given and when we would
announce the results. And those results were to be given on a
specific date, maybe September 28 or something. While the women
were gone, the Minister of Education in the government called up
the college and wanted to know whether his niece had been
accepted for the pre-nursing program. And so my reply was that
the exams had been scored, but we hadn't done the final
analysis, and as we had reported in the paper, all of the
results would be available at the same time to the public on
September 28. I had the good sense to write that in a letter to
the director of the college. But he didn't like what I'd done;
he just didn't like it. But I stood my ground. So I wasn't
expelled from the country, but my contract wasn't renewed.
I'm not sure of the details of how this happened, but I
ended up working for NIH in Ghana for 6 months on the Burkett's
tumor project. I was responsible for getting the tissue samples,
getting the osmium tetroxide, and we did 2 other lab
manifuplations and then. I hand-carried the samples in dry ice
to a plane at midnight to get to Washington, D.C. So that was
my last 6 months in Ghana.
And then, in November or December of '65, George met D. A.
[Donald A. Henderson] in New York somewhere, and they'd talked
about the smallpox program. So, in January and February, I
think, he was roaming around the 20 countries to be in the
eradication effort, getting the agreements signed.
We got married in Ghana on January 17, 1966, in an
incredible ceremony.
So there I was. George headed off to get these agreements
signed. We came back to Atlanta in that summer to help get the
team oriented to Africa..
So those are my beginnings.
Let me tell you 1 other thing. It relates to where I am
now. When I was at the University of Manchester, I had applied,
on the basis of recommendation from my professor, for a Ph.D.
program in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
There was an interesting morphological problem. There was
a weed in the prairies; when you pulled up a plant, if you left
any little piece of root, each root had the possibility of
making a whole new plant. So the weed was noxious from that
point of view. They wanted somebody to study that plant from a
morphological perspective.
So I got the scholarship. It paid for everything, but I
couldn't afford to get there. The professor said he made every
effort to try to get me there and found a scholarship from the
Dreyfus Company, $1,600, $1,700, something like that. It was a
scholarship for post-university work at any college or
university in our dominions or colonies, but it stipulated that
it was for a male student. And they said they were so happy if
somebody would try to change it, but it would take them 5 years.
So I went into teaching.
Sencer: You got married instead.
Lythcott: Yes. I met George. That derailed my whole plan. Yes.
Sencer: You came here in '66 for the training course?
Lythcott: Yes, yes.
Sencer: Was this your first experience in the States?
Lythcott: No. My first time in the United States was 1968. We'd been
married in '66, and I was still a British citizen. We found out
that when an American official was part of the diplomatic corps,
marries an alien overseas, and is returning to post overseas,
that the residency requirement for US citizenship is waived,
which makes good sense. Also, you can be naturalized in any
court that's meeting. So in 1968, I took all of the steps to
come in on an immigration visa. I had studied up the kazoo. We
found out that the federal court was meeting in Washington, D.C.
I was in New York, pregnant, so I went up for the day to
Washington, D.C. to take this exam. I took the oath, in a very
moving ceremony.
It came time for the exam. Well, I had studied. This judge
sat there, and he said, "How many arms of government?" "What do
we call this form of government?" Then the next question was,
"So tell me what you know about the Executive Branch." And in
all seriousness, I said to him, "You mean everything I know?"
And he looked at me, over the top of his glasses, and he said,
"Well, why don't you just start, and I'll tell you when to
stop." Well, I started, and I had this down. It was like
unpacking the files from memory, you know, and so on and so on I
went. He didn't ask me another single question. It was amazing.
Sencer: So, in the smallpox program when you went back after '66,
George had traveled around getting the agreements signed.
Lythcott: Right.
Sencer: And then what happened?
Lythcott: Most of the agreements were signed, but not all, when we came
back for the training program here in 1966. Nigeria was still
the very difficult one. And if I recall, 50% of the population
was in Nigeria, and I don't know if 50% of the smallpox cases
were there also, but without Nigeria, this program made no good
sense.
Back then, CDC had a program in Atlanta for the families
while the guys were going through their training. There were
some cultural events for children.
So George went off for a week to Nigeria to get the
agreement signed. But when he got there, all of these
hostilities between the north and the east had just erupted, and
nobody, but nobody, was interested in thinking about a smallpox
eradication-measles control program.
So it is my understanding that he did everything that he
could. And people would check in with him. It wasn't easy to
make long-distance calls back in those days. You could hear the
ocean, I think, in the background. You had to book your call 3
hours ahead of time. And so, when we knew a call had been
booked, I would actually be in the hallway, waiting. D. A. and
Billy and various people would be there, and I'd just wait in
the hall outside for messages.
George was an incredibly social person; he had people skills up
the kazoo. It's funny, because at the same time, he was also
very much of a homebody and a loner. He would say often things
like, "I don't care about anything else, just as long as I've
got you and my baby at home." But when he was out there, he had
people skills up the kazoo. And people found themselves talking
to him easily. He adored women, and women adored him.
From his days in Ghana, he knew about the underworld, you
know, those CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] spies, and so on.
Actually, the CIA tried to recruit George, and George came home
and told me about all of it. But he told some of the things that
they knew about him and about me, and I said, "I don't think you
need to be a part of that." So he gave it up, although it would
have meant a whole lot of money, which would have been helpful
with 4 children.
But he was used to that, sort of thinking, where messages
can be passed back and forth that can ameliorate situations
before they erupt. He was used to that sort of level of
conversation.
So George was at a cocktail party in Lagos He'd been
there about 6 or 7 weeks. And nobody knew much about the new
young leader of Nigeria, General Yakubu Gowan. As president of
the federation, he was in the middle of Yoruba country, but he
was from the Jos Plateau. So he didn't have his own people, his
own tribe, around him. So it must have been very tenuous for him
in the beginning. And so it was hard for George to find
connections with him because there weren't many in that milieu.
So George was at this party, chitchatting with the wife of
one of the Yoruba diplomats there whom he'd come to know. And
George said to this lady-it was very serendipitous-"He's such a
handsome young man. And he's not married, I hope. This is the
army," some conversation like this. And the woman leaned over
and she said, "Oh, no, he has a girlfriend." And so it was
through that contact that George then arranged an introduction
with. the girlfriend [I believe mistress would be a more apt
term. djs]
And so George told the young woman about the smallpox
program, what it would mean to children in all the 20 countries,
and that if Nigeria didn't sign, there would be no program. He
gave her that understanding, and she went to the President the
next day, and there it was the signed agreement.. Yeah.
Sencer: As you say, he had people skills.
Lythcott: Oh, he did, he did.
Sencer: Did you do much traveling with George, or were you a homebody?
Lythcott: I did some, but not much. Once the civil war erupted, we were
told by the American government that they were not requiring
dependents to leave but that if we left, we couldn't come back.
So I actually did very little traveling. I went to Abidjan, to
that meeting.
And then little Julie was born in November of 1967.
Sencer: Where was she born?
Lythcott: In Lagos, Nigeria.
Sencer: Which hospital?
Lythcott: It was a Nigerian hospital on the mainland. She was delivered
by midwives at the hospital. George brought my mother from
England to visit us, so she came for about 3 weeks, the first
and only time she ever flew in an airplane. So, of necessity, we
were home.
Sencer: You want to tell us some of George's printable exploits?
Lythcott: One that I didn't tell the other night was about Colonel
Labusquiere leader of OCEAC [Organization de Coordination pur
la Lutte contre Endemies d'Afrique Central]; he was a formidable
character. As I remember it, he wasn't at all persuaded that the
Americans had any role in the OCEAC countries; he thought that
the French were doing just fine, thank you very much. In the
case of smallpox, I think he was absolutely right, but measles
control was something he would gladly give up. But as George
used to describe him, the Colonel was just puffed up with
national pride. Any notions that Americans were going to be
coming to help them were just impossible.
So we were in Lagos, and we got a call that Colonel
Labusquiere, his wife, and his mother, who was traveling with
them from France to visit them in Cameroon (I think that's where
they lived), were going to have to lay over in Lagos, Nigeria,
because there was something wrong. They couldn't fly all the
way. I don't know what it was. But they were arriving in Lagos,
and of course they would stay with us. And I was in a panic now.
What are we going to do? So we've got Labusquiere, this
formidable character. As far as I knew, he spoke very little
English. And his mother was coming too.
Sencer: Right.
Lythcott: So I put the word out among the wives of those who worked in
the regional office-Bonnie Flanders [Bonnie Jean Flanders], Ilze
[Ilze Henderson], and Dotty Hicks [Dorothy Hicks] and so on-that
if anybody, anywhere, had any French literature-magazines,
books, anything-that I could at least put in their rooms, to let
me know. One of them came up with a magazine, and I got the
guestrooms ready. And you know how they did things in 1966. So I
put the magazine down on the bedside table for the mother, and
just flipped it open to a page, and placed it next to a little
vase of flowers. It turns out the page depicted a vineyard, and
this was their property. So completely serendipitous! There it
was. The next morning, the mother said, "How did you know?"
So they come, we're struggling through, in French. You
know, the astonishing thing about George was that he didn't
speak other languages, at least not at this point. He would have
a few words here and there, but that was a tribute to his people
skills as well. It was all eye contact and body language.
Anyway, we're struggling through dinner. I think Ilze and
Rafe [Ralph H. Henderson] came. I was struggling with my French.
I hadn't used it in a long, long time, but it seemed to be okay.
And we were getting through. It was a kind of a nice occasion.
So the next morning, at breakfast, we got up. I mentioned
that I hoped that they had spent a pleasant night, and so on.
And all of a sudden the colonel begins speaking in English that
is much better than my French. That old son-of-a-gun.
Sencer: Yeah.
Lythcott: And so he said that it had been a wonderful visit, and he said
the first thing that he needed to do was to toast George because
in one 24-hour period, this man had caused his mother and his
wife to fall in love.. And that's when the conversation about
the vineyards came up.
He thanked us for the evening and how they appreciated us
trying to put this together. And George always thought that was
a turning point in that relationship.
You have all of the other stories about the passports and
things, I'm sure.
Sencer: Well, we don't have them in your words. Actually, I don't think
those were recorded the other night, about filling in his
passport.
Lythcott: George was traveling with Jay Friedman [Jay S. Friedman]. I
think they were trying to go into Abidjan. George realized, as
he's going up to passport control, that this [unclear]. "I still
have these passports. Maybe I should send those to CDC. That
would be fun, wouldn't it?" with all the extra pages stuck in,
and so on and so on. And so he looked and found that his visa
had expired the day before. What was he going to do?
Somebody else goes through, and then George comes along.
The passport officer was a young woman. So George said to her,
in his own inimitable style, "Hello, honey. How are you doing?
May I borrow your pen?" And so she said, "Here's one." So she
took out a pen, gave it to George, and on the desk right in
front of her, he drew around the outside edge of the visa and
changed the date. So the date was, I don't know, tomorrow. So if
it said the 17th, he changed it to the 19th or something, right
there. And he gave her his passport, returned her pen, and she
said, "Fine, thank you very much. Have a good day, big boy."
Another time I think he just ripped out the old page of
his passport with the old visas that were attached and put it in
his passport.
And then there was the time, it was Julie's first
birthday, so November 28, 1968, George had been at a conference
with a whole lot of other people in Congo Brazzaville. I'm not
sure why, but George didn't get on the plane to come to Lagos as
we had thought. But he had let me know that he had invited 3
Russian physicians to Thanksgiving at our house.
This was a big deal because George cooked the turkey.
George could cook like you wouldn't believe. He put it on a spit
on the grill outside. And I was allowed nowhere near this
machine.
So I expecting George home, and he didn't come, and about
10 o'clock in the morning, the 3 Russian physicians arrived. And
I'm panicking a little bit. I have the turkey all dressed, it's
all ready to go, but I haven't heard from George. It's Julie's
first birthday. I knew he was going to be there if he could. And
nobody seemed to know what had happened to him.
Finally, about noon, totally unexpectedly, George breezed
in through the front door, dropped his suitcase and his coat,
and went right into the kitchen and said, "Is the turkey ready?"
and I said, "Yes." And so I followed behind him, and he said,
"Did the Russians come?" I said, "Yes, they're outside by the
pool." And he said, "Oh, by the way, your brother said to say
hello." My brothers are both in England. It made no sense to me.
But later, as I got the story, he had persuaded the people
in Congo Brazzaville that he absolutely had to get to Lagos,
Nigeria, he just had to. And so they entered into this whole
problem-solving with him. You know, that was the art, that he
got people to problem-solve with him. So they said, "Well, we
can't get you to Lagos, but we can get you to Rome, and maybe
you can get home from Rome." Know this. This was all on the
ticket from Congo Brazzaville to Lagos, so there was no extra
charge or anything involved here.
And so he got to Rome, and the same spiel, and he tells a
story and, of course, he's been talking to the stewardesses on
the plane. It's like he's got the whole world looking out for
him. They sent him to London in time to get the flight-BOAC, I
think it was-from London to Nigeria. While he was in London, he
called my brother. Oh, man.
Sencer: What were some of your high points in Africa, besides having
Julie?
Lythcott: Well, that was definitely the high point.
I think the only big conference that I knew about was the
one that we had in '69 in Lagos. It must have been in the
spring. Most of the photographs that I sent are from that
conference. I remember 2 things about that conference.
One is that George was bound and determined to have a
diplomatic coup, which was that all of these contiguous
countries would finally agree that a smallpox outbreak could be
attended to by the smallpox vaccination team that was closest to
the site, regardless of which side of the border the team was
on. And this was huge. So that from Nigeria, you could go into
Niger, and vice versa, for the purpose of containing smallpox.
And they reached that agreement at that meeting. So that was a
high point for George.
The other thing was that George had arranged-he was so
proud of this-for a sophisticated method of simultaneous
translation. Translators were sent in from Geneva, and they were
set up in little booths. But, of course, it was dependent on the
electricity working, and West Africa being West Africa at the
time, electricity working was not something that you could count
on. So George had requested that the translators be able to move
into consecutive translation as well. Well, that's what
happened. The electricity went out.
And I have this fabulous memory of these translations,
which were really improvisational performances. When the
translator was translating from the French into English, the
shoulders would go back and be squared, the neck would be
buttoned up, elbows tucked in, and the correct accent. And then
the same guy, when translating from English to French, would
tousle his hair, undo his shirt, and he'd be scratching and all
kinds of things. It was an absolutely wonderful performance.
I sought them out afterwards at the cocktail party, and
they said what a joy it was for them to go back to this old
skill that they used to have but didn't get to use anymore.
Sencer: Was one of them mustached?
Lythcott: Definitely. The other was a young woman who was on one of those
photographs. I remembered her name: Eleanor Trench I think one
of them may have been in that photograph.
Sencer: The mustached one was one of the WHO's [World Health
Organization] translators, and he was just magnificent, just
magnificent.
Lythcott: It must have been him.
Sencer: As you said, he would fall right into whichever language he was
working in. He was great.
Why do you think things worked so well in Africa, or
worked as well as they did?
Lythcott: You know, that's a complicated question. But I was thinking
about Bill Foege's presentation, the final one at the seminar
the other day. Bill's thought was that nobody really believed
that they could pull it off. There may have been an exception
because I know George believed it.
He came back from meeting with D. A., and he didn't say,
"We're going to try to eradicate smallpox." He said, "We're
going to eradicate smallpox," you know-and control measles. The
question for him was not whether it could be done. It was just,
how in the world are we going to get it done? So he believed it.
I don't know who did the interviewing, but given the
issues of racism and lack of cultural sensitivity in our nation
at that time, the selection of those young folks was amazing.
But it also may have been their youth. Because they were very
young, you know. When you're 23, 24, 28 years old and if you're
smart, you do believe you can do anything. I thought I could run
any school in the world better than anybody else who was doing
it at that time.
Sencer: You probably could.
Lythcott: Yeah. So it's that chutzpah of youth.
But I think the fact that there was a very small American
presence in each country was a fabulous decision. I think if
there'd been 10 CDCers per country, they would have coalesced
into a tight little team, whereas being only 1 or 2, they
trained their counterparts and worked with them; that was
critical to this process. But because there was usually only 1
in every country and the medical officer covered several
countries, there was a sense that you were not entirely
isolated.
And that's why George traveled 70% of the time. I
calculated it. He was gone from Lagos 70% of the time. He needed
to do that. He needed to have them know that somebody was on the
ground caring about things. And, you know, he did a lot of
caring for families. . So I think it was that. So there was the
animus of can-do.
I think the other thing was that there was probably a
little of that rambunctious devilry in all of these young people-
sort of an obstinacy that, if you hit a wall, it wasn't going to
get you down. It was just something to get over. I think there
was that.
Clearly, for the team from the United States, that link,
also incredibly tenuous-you know, how long it took to make an
overnight call; you sent telegrams, and relied on a way of
communicating that seems so old when we compare it to today's
world-but that link, tenuous as it was, was also incredibly
strong. I don't think for a minute that George ever thought that
there was anyone back in the United States that would say no,
would say we can't do it. It was that can-do spirit again.
And you have to give credit truly to the country nationals
also. It wouldn't have worked if they hadn't wanted it to work.
There were more ways than we could ever invent in our culture
for not getting it done in West Africa.
Do you remember when Rafe and somebody went to the
subcontinent to try to help WHO get that off the ground? I think
they were there for about 3 weeks for an initial conversation
with the Ministry of Health. So for 3 weeks, they'd met with the
Minister of Health. He had been very courteous, very engaging.
They'd had wonderful conversations. But there wasn't anything
happening, nothing! And it was about time for them to come home.
They had reached a level of maximum frustration, so they
requested a meeting with him. And he said, "Welcome, and good
journey home" and so on. And they said, "Before we go, we need
to tell you how frustrating this is. We thought we might be able
to go home and report that something had been done." And he said-
and this is the line, the actual quote-"What would you do if a
friend, as a gift, gave you an elephant? We can't cope with that
big thing!"
So the country nationals, they could have found ways to
not get it done, to not enter into the problem-solving. And you
have to believe that it was because they knew what a gift it was
to keep children well.
Sencer: I'm now giving editorial comment. So many of the people that
went from the United States had worked in state health
departments, where they saw their job not to be the leader, but
to get behind the leader and gently push: Let's get this done;
let's get this done. And I think a lot of that was part of the
success in Africa, that they recognized the primacy of the
native leaders.
Lythcott: Yes.
Sencer: And recognized that there were ways to get them to move.
Lythcott: Mm-hmm, yeah.
Sencer: I notice you're wearing a bracelet.
Lythcott: Yes.
Sencer: Tell me about it.
Lythcott: I will.
One of the extraordinary things about that time, which is
evident for all of us who came this weekend, is that it was a
short time in our lives. I'm 67 years old. The smallpox program
was 3 years; Ghana, before that, lasted 4 years. Seven years is
a very small part of a lifetime, but it was life-changing. We
all learned things. We all learned a way of being there. We
weren't there as art collectors; we weren't there out of
curiosity. We were there as national, you know, the old National
Geographic notion of, will there be curiosities?
Jim Lewis [James O. Lewis] was telling a story on Saturday
night about how the truck he was in had driven into this pond or
this mud in the road, and the driver had assured them that they
would get out. They were knee-deep in mud. People just turned up
on bicycles and helped them get this truck out of the mud and
refused payment and seemed offended to having even been offered
it. And Jim said that since then, he always stops to help on the
roadside. So, my point being that we all have remembrances of
that.
So, I've put on umpteen numbers of pounds, so I can't wear
my African clothing anymore. I just have 1 dress that I can
wear. But I wear it often. When I put it on, it puts me back in
that part of the world.
So the other day I was co-teaching a course with a
professor friend of mine at Stanford. He was delayed
considerably. When he got there, he said he'd had trouble with
his car on the way. I said, "Now I'm going to use an Africanism
at Stanford." He had trouble with his car. And my immediate
response was, "Oh, sorry." And he said, "Don't be sorry. It's
not your fault." And I said, "It's the West African sorry,"
sorry that the world did this to you.
Another memory, when Georgia died. In Nigeria, if they
came to your office and you weren't there, there was this
phrase, "I came and I met your absence." It's the notion that
there's a presence of your absence as well as the absence of
your presence. And they're not the same.
Sencer: You mentioned life-changing.. How did it change your life?
Lythcott: It taught me that I needed to revise my sense of my own
country. I needed to give up this notion of glorious British
history and acknowledge that some of British history was an
inglorious thing. Nobody had taught me in England about our role
in the slave trade, or that there even was one. I specialized in
the sciences. I gave up studying history at Henry VII to
specialize in the sciences. But I don't think that they taught
that in British schools anyway. How the raj came to be is an
incredibly important issue. I had to reshape how I walked on
planet Earth. So I think that that made me, as a human being,
open to the difficulty of understanding cross-cultures and being
with cross-cultures. One of the things that we talk about in
academia is this notion of white privilege and how hard it is
when you are in the position of privilege, which is almost
always tacit. You just don't know yourself well enough to be
think across cultures. So I think it did that for me.
And the experience taught me the role of sharing, of not
holding onto objects too hard, of the extended family, of what
you have you have to share, and that kind of thing. And so, in
lots of ways, George and I became who we were as a result of
being in Africa.
So I just wanted to say that now, Julie, our daughter, and
her husband and her 2 children, and I pooled our resources and
we bought a house together in Palo Alto. We never could have
done it on our own resources. So we're living together under the
same roof, a situation fraught with potential dangers, you know,
the old mother-daughter thing, your mother-in-law. And we said
at the outset that we knew it was going to be difficult and that
we wouldn't hide it under the table. We'd make sure that we put
it on top.
It's been such an incredible journey for Julie and I.
Julie is all set to write a book about it.
One of the incredible things about George was that he
never stopped living. He changed his mind on some really big
things as an older person, as a 60-odd-year-old, as a 72-year-
old. It's quite astonishing, you know. But I think once you've
been in a situation where your whole world, the things that
you're sure about, have to be totally examined, you can see
yourself whole and confident and competent, having gone through
that change.
Sencer: Yes. What's Julie doing now?
Lythcott: Julie is dean of freshmen at Stanford, and just newly promoted
to associate vice-provost. She just completed her 4th year, and
they absolutely adore her. Every year they've changed her role
and brought her more into the centrality of what's happening at
the university.
This year, one of the things she initiated was that the
incoming freshmen would read 3 books, or they could choose 1 of
3. Stanford will have the authors there, during orientation, so
that there will be a conversation between the authors and the
freshmen. They chose books on Afghanistan, Haiti, and a
collection of short stories about mothers and daughters.
Sencer: Carrying On the Tradition.
Lythcott: Carrying On the Tradition. That's exactly right. She has
George's oratorical skills, and she has George's charisma.
You know, I saw George walk into a typical West African
cocktail party (that's how people there spent their evenings),
into a gathering of 80 people, and the room changed when he
walked in. He had that power. Julie has that power too.
Sencer: I'll tell you a story about George. We were in Mali and going
out to the Dogon country. This was at the time of the 25th
millionth vaccination. And we stopped at a little rest house way
out in the middle of nowhere. At that time, Mali was very
Chinese dominated. We walked in to the rest house. George was in
a big orange jumpsuit. There were 3 Chinese in there, and they
came over to him thinking him to be Malian, and George said,
"Howdy, brothers!" And those Chinese turned tail and left,
realizing he was an American.
Lythcott: Oh, man! Yeah.
George was with the first team that went into China after
Nixon went. And then he went a second time. The second time, he
was walking on the Great Wall of China, and he heard someone
call out behind him, "George Lythcott?" Can't help
Can I just tell you how D.A. looked after us in Atlanta?
Sencer: Please.
Lythcott: We were living in a motel, and D. A. was persuaded that
trouble was brewing in the motel. We were breaking the
segregation laws in several states at that time. I know that.
And so he moved us for the duration to the apartment of at
Unitarian minister.
And then, while we were still here, George had to go to
Washington for some reason, I'm not sure why. We were newly
married that year, and I had hardly seen George. You know, he'd
been roaming around West and Central Africa since we got
married. Three days after we got married, he left. And then he
was gone for 9 weeks in the summer. So George said, "I want you
to come with me." The idea was that we would go on the overnight
train from Atlanta to Washington, getting into the Washington on
the sleeper train at 6:30 in the morning. But D. A. was very
worried about us, as was George. So they got the plan together,
which was that both George and D. A-and I don't know how tall D.
A. is, about 6'; George was 6'2½"-with their raincoats on,
unbuttoned, would get to the railroad station, with me, and then
we would walk fast. I'm 5'½" tall. Their raincoats would flap
open, and I would be hidden behind these raincoat flaps, and
they would hustle me on the train. And that's what they did. And
all was well.
And then the last thing involved the chairman of the
department in Oklahoma. He had come from Mississippi and had
been told at his interview, "We have a black American on the
faculty. How do you feel about it?"And the man had said, "Oh,
just fine, just fine." And then a week or 2 after he became
department chair, he called George in and said, "You need to
know that I can't have anyone on my faculty whom I can't invite
home to dinner."
Later, that same guy applied for a position to Johns
Hopkins. All we knew was George got a brown paper envelope. In
it was a letter of application from this guy, and D. A.'s
response on a little office memo. D. A. just wrote on it, "Turn
of the screw." So D. A. looked after us in really important
ways.
Sencer: Yes.
Well, thank you for talking.
Lythcott: Oh, you're welcome.
Sencer: And we'll sign off now at 10:25. Thank you very much.
Lythcott: Thank you.
# # #
</pre>
Player
html for embedded player to stream video content
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/310129775%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-3IgEq&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="166"></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording - nonmusical
interviews
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2006-07-16
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/158q3
emory:158q3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Smallpox Eradication
USAID
WHO
CDC
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
585786768 bytes
audio/x-aiff
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sencer, David (Interviewer); CDC; Former Director of CDC
Lythcott, Jeannie (Interviewee); CDC; Wife of Regional Director
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Centers for Disease Control
Reunion of West and Central Africa Smallpox workers (2006 : Atlanta, Georgia)
Title
A name given to the resource
LYTHCOTT, JEAN
Description
An account of the resource
Jeannie Lythcott, widow of George Lythcott, who was the Director of the West African Regional Office of the Smallpox Eradication Program in Lagos Nigeria from 1966-69. Jeannie, originally from England, tells how she came to work in Ghana and met and married George. She narrates some of her husband's escapades working for the Smallpox Eradication Program and how it changed her life.
Language
A language of the resource
English
-
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/15cff6897b42722de6d85ec8ddd53485.jpg
96f9857b18795fa6e75ffee8451b5e43
https://globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/3f591a9f59cfa5f845cac4a292f46849.pdf
cbe8473a9db438866875ed8550f218c2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smallpox
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="landing">
<p>Smallpox disease was declared eradicated in 1980, the result of a collaborative global campaign. To date, it is the only disease affecting humans to be eradicated from the world. Global eradication of smallpox ranks among the great achievements of humankind. Gone, through determined human effort, is a disease which has brought death to millions, frequently altering the course of history, and traveling through the centuries to every part of the world. </p>
<p>The vital contributions made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are highlighted. Official government correspondence, meeting transcripts, policy statements, surveillance reports and mortality statistics tell a part of that story. Adding depth to these traditional archives are the personal stories of the public health pioneers who worked tirelessly on the frontlines of the smallpox eradication campaign.</p>
<p>The links above connect you to a database of oral histories, photographs, documents, and other media.</p>
<p>Use of this information is free, but please see <strong>“About this Site”</strong> for guidance on how to acknowledge the sources of the information used</p>
</div>
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound.
<pre><strong>
Interview Transcript
</strong>
INTERVIEW
Audio File: Dawn Eidelman Audio File
Transcribed: January 23, 2008
Interviewer: This is just formality. Now I'm David Sensor. I'm
interviewing Dawn Eidelman on the third of April, two thousand and
eight at CDC. Dawn knows that she is being taped and has signed
permission.
How old were you when you went to Africa?
Interviewee: When we went to Africa I was five years old so I started
my formal schooling in Lome, Togo at L'ecole de la Marina, not
speaking a word of French on day one and it was a rather traumatic
first day of school. I about half way through the day had to use the
facilities but didn't know how to ask. They figured out what I needed
but then when they showed me the facilities I had no idea how to use
the drain in the ground. So luckily we had a long school day and a
long lunch and I went home for lunch and my ingenious mother noticed
that I had an outfit that was almost identical, persuaded me that
nobody would know the difference. I went back for the afternoon and
she clued me in how to use the little drain in the ground and
astonishingly within a month I was starting to understand the French.
They only white kid in the class, pigtails, we had the little
inkwells in the desk and by the end kindergarten my father was I think
a little bit jealous that my French was pretty solid and quite
effortlessly. So, in my line of work now I'm a huge advocate of total
immersion for English acquisition. I don't believe in segregating
students for a lingual education because I know that children are
really like sponges.
Interviewer: How long were you in school in Togo?
Interviewee: In Togo I was there through middle of the third grade. So
kindergarten first and second, at L'ecole de la Marina, French system
but African private school. Third grade was an interesting
experience. The first half of the year we were still in Lome and the
first house that we had lived in, the bottom floor - excuse me - the
bottom floor had become Boutique Togo Agogo and the top floor our
school house for the American kids. And we used Calvert which is
still in existence now for distance learning and one or two of the
moms who had teaching experience facilitated. And we had assembly in
the living room and the two bedrooms were I think the odd grades and
the even grades. So we did distance learning in an American program
and that's when I first started formal studies of English.
Interviewer: In addition to learning about how to use the toilette what
are some of your other interesting experiences in your formative
years?
Interviewee: So many. As I shared on the way over here I really did
not like the Sunday ritual of having to take Aralen. It was really
nasty and bitter and ugh I just couldn't abide it. So, I didn't take
it on a couple of occasions and I became quite ill with malaria and I
remember that fever and sitting in the tub taking baths, trying to get
that fever to break. That one is definitely a distinct memory. It
was actually an idyllic childhood. We didn't have TV. I had a record
player and a few records and I know those lyrics to this day backward,
forward, inside out. Just a couple of toys and what that really did
was promote a comfort level with time in solitude, time for
recollection, time to develop an expansive imagination and I regret
that more children don't have that experience in childhood now because
I think it's very important for really becoming who you're capable of
becoming. Having some quiet time and not being programmed all the
time with activities. And we had a lot of really cool pets. A family
of bush babies, we had a parrot, feisty Senegalese parrot Bud who came
back to the States with my mum and lived another twenty years or so in
captivity and remained feisty all the way. We also had a podo and
that was quite the dramatic story and a small python.
We kept mice in a cage. Every Sunday after waffles and Aralen we
would in the afternoon watch the python devour a mouse. That's what
we did for kicks. Some men came to paint our ceiling fans, let the
mice out of the cage. One of the mice bit the podo and the podo was
probably our closest family pet. She would pluck out my dad's chest
hairs when he was taking a nap. She got into my mum's birth control
pills. Very, very intimate family member and so it was really tragic
when she got rabies and she also bit my mother. So the whole family
went through the rabies series and I remember Dr. Henn would clean up
the syringes and obviously get rid of the needles and everything and
make them suitable for water fights so my brother Dave and I would
have water fights. But Christmas that year we had a rabies shot
because we were going through the series at that point.
So memories of pets and lazy days, a lot of reading, listening to
music, very few toys but the ones we had we really cherished.
Halloween was fun. We would -they thought that we were absolutely
nuts. My mum was a really fun hostess and I remember one year we put
sheets over the clothes line to make a tunnel of terror and we dressed
up in all kind of different costumes that our tailor made for us and
wondered what the crazy Americans were up to. I remember some
rollicking fun. There was some great adult parties and they never
seemed to mind that we were kind of milling around.
Interviewer: I remember visiting your house. It was probably in
seventy, no sixty eight, and George (Lithket) and Don Millar and I we
were making our big tour of Africa. It was a very pleasant evening I
remember. What was your feeling about life in - of other people in
Africa?
Interviewee: Of the Africans or the other Americans?
Interviewer: Africans.
Interviewee: Interesting again from a child's perspective. I did have
an awareness of being very privileged and I remember one day standing
out on the balcony with my doll and looking across the street at an
African girl who was about the same age who was also holding up her
doll. And just noting the disparity in the quality of the houses that
we were living in and feeling that somehow that wasn't fair but I
loved the experience of going to L'ecole de la Marina and I think that
too has had a profound impact on my world view as an adult. A lot of
what I do professionally is - most of our charter schools that we
start up and manage are in the inner city and Inc. magazine has
something called Inner City 100 the fastest growing companies that
serve, that revitalize, generate jobs for, really enhance inner city
populations in the U.S. and our company for three years in a row was
in the top five. So the need is really great in neighborhoods where
children live poverty.
And so much of what I feel really deeply about is not prejudging what
children are capable of accomplishing and really holding a high
standard and a high expectation for everyone and rising to the
occasion as adults to serve that need. And a lot of it I think goes
back to how I felt on that first day of school looking around me at
the all these kids, African kids who understood everything that was
going on in French. I didn't understand a word. It was a hugely
humbling experience and I think that that childhood experience and
being a minority having - really I recall that it was just a very
happy culture. It was a wonderful time in life and I think that that
had an impact on the way I see these children in the U.S. living in
poverty and not all of them. We serve children in affluent
neighborhoods too but I think that even as a child I was keenly aware
coming back to the States in seventy two how marginalized African
Americans were in this country and just being astonished by that
because I'd really idealized the States living overseas and it was -
it was a surprise.
Interviewer: Were you stationed in any of the other countries in
Africa?
Interviewee: We were in Nigeria for a year and we lived in Kaduna in
the Hogan's house after they moved out. That was - it was a huge
cavernous house great for telling ghost stories. There were parts of
the house we never even went into and that was during the civil war so
we stayed very close to home. There we ended up going to a Catholic
school, Sacred Heart and that's when I had my encounter with British
education and it really for years I had some issues with my spelling
as a result. But it was - Nigeria was a positive experience for my
brother and me as children but unfortunately that was the time that my
parents' marriage was starting to come apart. So that was for them I
don't think nearly as positive as Togo had been.
Interviewer: You were in a Muslim culture in Kaduna.
Interviewee: Hmm.
Interviewer: Did that hinge upon you in any way?
Interviewee: Not in a way that I can recall. I don't really - maybe it
had to do with the fact that we were going to a Catholic school but I
think I was a little bit oblivious to that because it was never much
of an issue with my parents and I don't think that that really
registered.
Interviewer: I would think that the environment in Togo was a much
happier environment then?
Interviewee: It really was. It was just such as positive place and
really all the other expats there that we met I loved the peace corps
volunteers for years as a kid that I aspired to serving in the peace
corps and it just - it was a great culture. Wonderful gatherings,
great music. The music too that my parents had on the reel to reel
tapes that we played over and over again. The top one hundred hits of
nineteen sixty six Bob Dylan, Blood Sweat and Tears, Beach Boys, but
they made for some really wonderful gatherings.
Interviewer: You spent some time in Bangladesh with you father?
Interviewee: We did. My brother and I spent about half of the summer.
The year must have been seventy five and we went to Bangladesh first
and stayed in (Aham) and he was wrapping up some work and then we went
together to Nepal and stayed in Dave Newberry's house in Kathmandu and
we went to India and we were in New Delhi almost the whole time we
were there. We did a couple of side trips. I think my brother and I
went to see the Taj Mahal one day and we spent a week on a houseboat
in Kashmir as well and that was an interesting experience because the
only meat that one could eat there was lamb. So we either ate lamb or
things cooked in lamb's grease. The left an impression too. French
toast in lamb's grease.
Interviewer: Do you still like lamb?
Interviewee: I really don't. Not so much, not if it's gamey.
Interviewer: And I think that's - to me that's one of the problems with
lamb today is not gamey enough. You hardly know you're eating it.
Were you in Bangladesh long enough to have any feeling for the
country?
Interviewee: I remember the crushing poverty of the country and seeing
a body on the street and I couldn't discern if the person was sleeping
or dead. It was, I was just really aware of the poverty and it was
also so incredibly muggy. That also left quite the impression.
Almost hard to breathe there and in India and you know this was in the
back half of the summer so it was incredibly hot and humid. No I just
- I remember Bangladesh as being - and I was a little older too. I
was fourteen when we visited Dad that summer so I was very aware of
children living in poverty and begging and you know missing limbs. It
was very hard especially coming from living in the States for a few
years then, living a very comfortable middle class lifestyle and then
experiencing the poverty was - it was a lot more shocking at that
point.
Interviewer: Is there anything else about your experiences that you
would like to get on the record?
Interviewee: Yeah. I think what's really most remarkable to me about
those years besides the fact that it was truly an idyllic childhood
and a time to be able to enjoy family, friends, gathering, time for
reflection, time to really, to read, to sing, to get to know a few
texts really, really well because there weren't a lot of other
distractions. And I'm very proud of having been a part of smallpox
eradication as a child experiencing that because it was such an
amazing endeavor and I remember upstairs in the bar you know the house
in Lome dad kept scabs in the freezer of the things of that - we just
never went into that refrigerator. It was also a bar. We weren't
supposed to be there but I remember even at the time - I remember even
at the time being very proud of the work that my dad was doing and
really liking the people he was working with and finding it really
interesting to hear the stories of when he was breaking bread with the
chief of the village and trying to negotiate access to the veiled
women so that he could vaccinate them.
I loved the time that I got to spend with both of my parents with that
lifestyle. Dad and I used to play chess all the time and that was a
lot of fun and we spoke French together and that was enjoyable. From
my perspective today it's - I'm very proud to have been a part of
something so historic and huge and I loved doing the reunion a couple
of years ago. The reflections about how the young doctors and - what
were they called? The operations...
Interviewer: Operations officers.
Interviewee: Officers, operations officers, really in many ways didn't
know what they didn't know. That's something as an entrepreneur that
I can really appreciate and it's something that I think it's what's
truly remarkable about this global endeavor that was really impressive
[inaudible 19.40] at the time. Sometimes not knowing what you don't
know, not knowing the magnitude of the project that you're taking on
is a blessing and thank goodness, thank goodness we had courageous,
bold, ambitious, tenacious, brilliant, dedicated people who with all
those qualities didn't know what they didn't know and they kept at it
and they chased this disease from the face of the earth.
Interviewer: And most of them were very kind people.
Interviewee: Absolutely. Absolutely so. It was, it was a great
community to be part of and I remember that vividly even as a child.
These were - several of these folks I called uncle for years to come
and even at the time I knew that it was special and we were part of
something that we could be proud of.
Interviewer: Thank you.
</pre>
Player
html for embedded player to stream video content
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jdlLEyID2OI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
interviews
motion pictures
moving image
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-04-03
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/15jnn
emory:15jnn
Subject
The topic of the resource
CDC
Smallpox Eradication
USAID
WHO
Life as expatriate child
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
4466760000 bytes
video/x-dv
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sencer, David (Interviewer); CDC
Eidelman, Dawn (Interviewee)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Centers for Disease Control
Title
A name given to the resource
EIDELMAN, DAWN
Description
An account of the resource
Dawn Eidelman, daughter of Andy Agle, who served as an Operations Officer in Togo and later in Southeast Asia. Dawn begins by recounting her first day at a French school in Lome, Togo at age 5, coming down with malaria, their unusual household pets, celebrating holidays while living abroad, as well as realizing disparities of wealth as a child. Later Dawn accompanied her father on smallpox eradication work trips in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. Dawn expresses her pride in being a member of the of the Smallpox Eradication Program community.
Language
A language of the resource
English