Interview Transcript
Interview
Patrick McCannon | with Interviewer [unnamed]
Transcribed from audio: January 28 2009 | Duration 0:07:47
Interviewer: This is an interview with Patrick McCannon on April1, 2008
at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta,
Georgia, about his involvement with the India Smallpox
Eradication Project.
How did you get involved in Public Health?
Patrick McCannon: I was a recent graduate or about to graduate from
the University of Wisconsin and back in the stone age when they
actually sent people to recruit new graduates on the campus, and
I went to several interviews and I had job offers from Dunn &
Bradstreet, DOW Chemical and outfit that was trying to eradicate
Syphilis from the United States and that one sounded interesting
and I'd never heard of CDC before then. They talked about it
being with the Public Health Service. So I put in my application
for the recruiter and followed up several times, and that was
it.
Interviewer: So was Public Health something that you always knew you
were interested in?
Patrick McCannon: No. I absolutely had no idea of public health. I
wish I could say that I was dreaming about a career in public
health since I was eight years old, but I didn't have a clue
about it.
Interviewer: So how would you describe your early life and education
through high school?
Patrick McCannon: Wow! I grew up in small towns in Minnesota and
Wisconsin. Sort of typical for that area, interesting, I enjoyed
school immensely, I played all the different sports and got
involved in all the different kind of activities in school that
they offered and had a very good time, enjoyed it. I went to
Catholic school early on and then public school.
Interviewer: So how did you decide that you wanted to go to India on
the Smallpox Eradication Project?
Patrick McCannon: Well actually, it wasn't India, for me, it was
Bangladesh, but I had joined CDC in 1967 - February of 1967, and
one of the programs that was rolled out several years after
that, I think it may have been '69 or '68 was the Smallpox
Campaign in West Africa and I desperately wanted to get involved
in that. I'd been on the job for several years and it sounded
exciting and really sort of a golden opportunity, but I wasn't
able to compete. I didn't have enough years in service and they
had a lot of people volunteering for the West Africa Campaign;
and I kept an eye on things as they were looking for volunteers
for Bangladesh, I put my name in and went through some
interviews and I was selected to be one of the people to go over
on the first team that they sent after they discovered the re-
introduction of smallpox in Bangladesh.
Interviewer: What were some of the hardships that you faced upon
arriving in Bangladesh; any culture shock?
Patrick McCannon: I'm sure I'd suffer from culture shock. Like
everybody I had limited travel experience. I'd traveled in
Europe but nothing that approached a third world country, and at
that time Bangladesh was just coming back from a terrible war
with Pakistan and for the entire country there were either news
reports of Bangladesh being the basket case of the world. You
know, very, very difficult living in Bangladesh at the time, for
the residents there. So I'm sure that I had culture shock seeing
third world country and people living in very deprived
conditions.
Interviewer: Were there any main changes between the work that you did
here and the work that you did in Bangladesh, with the new
responsibilities?
Patrick McCannon: The environment in which we did the work was just
totally different and it required a lot of attention to be
attentive to the environment around you and the people and all
the things that make up a third world country and the condition
that Bangladesh was in; and then you add on the disease that
you're dealing with. Smallpox was a real killer and this really
very major and as soon as we arrived we went to the old cholera
hospital that had in part been turned into a smallpox ward for
the indigent and isolation area and we were given a three-day
course on differential diagnosis of smallpox and identification
of smallpox, and how to handle specimens and how to handle
patients, and how to set up remedial care for the people that
were afflicted with smallpox; and this was prior to our going
out into the areas that we went to. So just the foreign
environment, the sort of dealing with the disease that basically
there was no treatment for except for to care, remedial care,
and with substantial mortality. So that combined to be a very
unique experience, regardless of the background that I had.
There were some things that I was very pleased with, I mean in
retrospect, like the training that I had had and I was a public
health adviser, and basically that was CDC's management entry
point for people that they would build into managers, who
eventually would be, maybe, in senior management positions at
CDC, and you learn by doing, you had mentors that provided you
assistance along the way. You were put into State assignments
and moved all around the country in different assignments and
progressed up the ladder, and then some people came to CDC
[Audio ended prematurely - 0::07:47]
Patrick McCannon Oral History
Patrick McCannon interviewed by
July 29, 2008
Pat McCannon was a Public Health Advisor assigned to Bangladesh Smallpox Eradication Program.
Information regarding the reproduction and use of this resource may be obtained by contacting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of the General Counsel, 1600 Clifton Road N.E., Mailstop D-53, Atlanta, GA 30329, USA. Phone: 404-639-7200. Fax: 404-639-7351
