Dr. William Foege, leader in smallpox eradication, dies

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ATLANTA (AP) — Dr. William Foege, a leader of one of humanity’s greatest public health victories — the global eradication of smallpox — has died.

Foege died Saturday in Atlanta at the age of 89, according to the Task Force for Global Health, which he co-founded.

The 6-foot-7 inch Foege literally stood out in the field of public health. A whip-smart medical doctor with a calm demeanor, he had a canny knack for beating back infectious diseases.

He was director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and later held other key leadership roles in campaigns against international health problems.

But his greatest achievement came before all that, with his work on smallpox, one of the most lethal diseases in human history. For centuries, it killed about one-third of the people it infected and left most survivors with deep scars on their faces from the pus-filled lesions.

Smallpox vaccination campaigns were well established by the time Foege was a young doctor. Indeed, it was no longer seen in the United States. But infections were still occurring elsewhere, and efforts to stamp them out were stalling.

Working as a medical missionary in Nigeria in the 1960s, Foege and his colleagues developed a “ring containment” strategy, in which a smallpox outbreak was contained by identifying each smallpox case and vaccinating everyone who the patients might come into contact with.

The method relied heavily on quick detective work and was born out of necessity. There simply wasn’t enough vaccine available to immunize everyone, Foege wrote in “House on Fire,” his 2011 book about the smallpox eradication effort.

It worked, and became pivotal in helping rid the world of smallpox for good. The last naturally occurring case was seen in Somalia in 1977. In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated from the Earth.

“If you look at the simple metric of who has saved the most lives, he is right up there with the pantheon. Smallpox eradication has prevented hundreds of millions of deaths,” said former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden, who consulted with Foege regularly.

Foege was born March 12, 1936. His father was a Lutheran minister, but he became interested in medicine at 13 while working at a drugstore in Colville, Washington.

He got his medical degree from the University of Washington in 1961 and a master’s in public health from Harvard in 1965.

He was director of the Atlanta-based CDC from 1977 to 1983, then held other international public health leadership roles, including stints as executive director at The Carter Center and senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2012, President Barack Obama presented Foege with the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In 2016, while awarding Foege an honorary degree, Duke University President President Richard Brodhead called him “the Father of Global Health.”

“Bill Foege had an unflagging commitment to improving the health of people across the world, through powerful, purpose-driven coalitions applying the best science available,” Task Force for Global Health CEO Dr. Patrick O’Carroll said in a statement. “We try to honor that commitment in every one of our programs, every day.”

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Jack Dura contributed to this report from Bismarck, North Dakota.