Interview Transcript
Interview
Dr. Richard Greenberg | with Interviewer Kerry White
Transcribed from audio: January 29 2009 | Duration 0:31:17
Kerry White: This is an interview with Rick Greenberg on July12, 2008
at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta,
Georgia, about his role in the Smallpox Eradication Project, and
the interviewer Kerry White.
With this interview, we are hoping 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
have about events that took place and the people that you worked
with. The legal agreement you just signed says that you are
donating the oral history to the U.S. Federal Government and it
will be put in the public domain. So, for the record, could you
please state your full name and that you know you're being
recorded.
Richard Greenberg: I'm Richard Neil Greenberg and I know I'm being
recorded.
Kerry White: Thank you. First of all we just wanted to get a little bit
of background on your childhood and the type of education you
had before you set out to do that Eradication Smallpox Program
in India.
Richard Greenberg: I grew up in Washington DC, went to Cornell
University, I went to Tufts University School of Medicine, and
took two years of residency program in medicine and then went to
the Centers for Disease Control where I was stationed in
Louisiana, actually in the city in New Orleans, and I started
after my training, my one month training at CDC, I started in
August in New Orleans and really had never traveled to any
developing area, just basically, Europe, Canada and the United
States. In December, I was asked to volunteer, to consider going
to India to work in the WHO Smallpox Eradication Program. That
was December of 1974.
Kerry White: I just want to ask you what your responsibilities where
when you were sent over there in '74 and the Province that you
were - Were you telling me a little bit about the Province that
you were working in?
Richard Greenberg: The responsibility was basically to find and contain
all the outbreaks of smallpox in the area that I was assigned
which was a Western district, just bordering on Uttar Pradesh
near the city of Varnasi, but I was in Bihar.
Kerry White: Okay.
Richard Greenberg: And I was the last district before you entered Uttar
Pradesh, and I was stationed there for about three months.
Kerry White: So during your time you were in the North, what was your
experience like with the local people, and how you interacted
with them while you were trying to work on the project?
Richard Greenberg: I'd like to kind of tell you from the get go, what
happened.
Kerry White: Okay.
Richard Greenberg: I was pretty inexperienced and hadn't a clue what
Asia and the Subcontinent where all about. In fact, I'd stopped
on my way to India on the assignment to visit relatives in
Israel and then landed a little early in the morning of the day
- of the evening I was supposed to be in New Delhi, in Bombay,
and I read my travel books and I figured it'd be great to go see
the gates of India and the mystical city of Bombay. I arrived
about daybreak at the Bombay Airport which was a nice airport,
and I check my luggage and then I asked an information person
how I could get to the gates of India, if I could just take the
subway; and I got a very strange look from this individual and
he said, "You're better off taking a taxi." But I wanted to just
experience the whole trip and I asked where the station was,
they told me, I had to walk out - and all of a sudden, I was
confronted with what appeared to be a sea of individuals, either
asking for what they call "baksheesh" or tips or if I wanted a
taxi ride. I was lost, so I quickly maneuvered through this
crowd of people, down a relatively dirty road and then I entered
the subway station and I realized, I think for the first time, I
was somewhere else because all the signs were not in English. I
handed some money to get in and the subway had a stairway that
would take you down to many, many tracks, just like the old-
fashioned train stations which had many trains at many different
tracks. Every sign was in Hindi.
There were many people without arms and legs on the stairs
asking for donations, and the sea of people pushed me down the
stairs, down into the subway station. I just kept moving because
everybody else was moving. Some people were dressed with ties
and jackets and some people were just - it seemed to me just
dressed with sheets on. The cars were teaming with people, they
were on top; they were on the side, I yelled out, "Oh God!
Jesus, help me!" And out of the roar, I heard a sound that said,
"Over here." And I said, "Who?" And I heard, "Over here." And
off into one little area by a subway train was a westerner who
had heard me scream, "Oh God!" He comforted me right away and he
said, "You know, I know just what's happening to you and I went
through it. And when I went through it, there was someone to
help me." He said, "I have the morning. I'm going to help you."
And my first dose of culture shock was treated by this wonderful
individual who basically helped me work my way through the
beginning of this adjustment, and we spent the morning, looking
at the museums and the city of Bombay. Then in the afternoon
I've met some people and life was getting a little easier, and I
saw what I wanted to see, and then I hopped a plane to New
Delhi. Just amazed at what I had gone through in that one day of
learning what culture shock was. If I look down, I have some
notes here of these short little stories.
When we arrived in New Delhi the next day, we went to the WHO
Headquarters and Dr. Foege and his staff gave us instructions,
very clear instructions on what we were to do and what smallpox
would look like, and there was a group of us from America that
met over there, about five or six individuals. So we went
through the training and then we were shipped out by plane. The
group was divided into those people that went to UP, Uttar
Pradesh, and the group that went to Bihar, and I can remember as
the plane flew over, I believe it was Patna, it was clouded in
and the plane couldn't land. So then they went to Lucknow to
land and then came back to Patna to land. I was a little
concerned about all this but at that time that was how they flew
over in India. There were times you couldn't land because of
poor visibility; and when we got to Patna, the local
administrators trained us again and took us out on our first
field trip to see a containment-our first case of smallpox. We
went to a park and in the park was a tent and in the tent was an
old man. There were three or four of us there that were going to
work in Bihar at that time and he showed us his smallpox, and it
turned out, what he was showing us was Syphilis. I kind of
didn't know how to take that except, figured that we'd better be
thinking for ourselves during this period of time and not taking
other people's words for it. We didn't say anything to our host,
but it did raise some eyebrows to know that here we've been
trained to see smallpox and the first real case in the field was
Syphilis.
Then we got in the jeep and drove to my assignment which was
several hours away in a land that I was taking in for the first
time and all the different cultural things that I was seeing
that I don't have - shouldn't necessarily go in to, but it was
just different. Very rural, very agricultural and the roads were
very scary. When I arrived, I should mention that I was warned,
that there may not be the kind of resources you'd expect such as
a grocery store; and that you'd better stock up on things before
you get to your assignment. So actually, in Delhi, we did go to
the American Embassy and I took an empty suitcase. I went to
their commissary and basically cleared out their little store of
all the tuna fish and all the fruit cocktail and anything else
in a can that I thought I could use for the next three months;
toilet paper, and people thought it was a little strange that I
came in there with an empty suitcase. But I can guarantee you
that when I left, it was full; and it did make a huge difference
in my survival because where I was, there was no such thing as a
restaurant, there was no such thing as a hotel. In fact, if you
wanted chicken for dinner, the chicken had to be - the live
chicken had to be purchased and the cook that you asked to
prepare it would actually kill it, take the feathers out, and
then cook it. You'd actually have fresh chicken. Refrigeration
was a luxury. So we had to scrounge around the final place to
stay, I actually found a very nice little rest home with three
rooms and I stayed there, and it had a-what they call a Chokidar
and a cook who helped take care of me during my assignment.
So survival was No. 1, but with my suitcase and with this little
three bedroom relic from, I guess, when the British were there,
I survived and was able to focus on my job. Then the work began-
and I'm looking down here to see what the second thing is, I
wanted to talk about. When I got there, I tried to understand
the culture and tried to understand the people and tried to
understand myself, and I guess I wasn't doing a very good job
because I got a letter from Dr. Foege, telling me that if I
don't do a better job, he may send me home. Shortly after that,
an experienced smallpox eradication worker named Steve Jones
arrived and God bless Steve Jones because he changed my life. He
explained to me how to do the job right, and for a couple of
days, I felt like I had a real brother. He reiterated what Dr.
Foege had told me, but he showed me how to put it into action. I
think from that moment on, I made 180-degree turn and was able
to find the remaining spots of smallpox. Where I was, most of
the cases had been eliminated, eradicated. I think I saw about
35 cases of smallpox and I saw the last cases in my district. So
it was a lot of searching, but we did find all of them. The
things that Dr. Jones taught me, where to be tough, follow my
instinct, make sure I did everything fully, no shortcuts, and if
the people asked me if I wanted to go to the left to inspect the
houses on the left in the village, I'd go right. If they didn't
want me to go somewhere, I went there. I would come back to the
villages three or four hours after I had setup containment to
find what was going on; and when the villagers realize that I
was going to continue to go and come and go and come and not
announce myself, and plus, we were paying them, and those that
didn't do their job lost their job. We setup excellent
containment.
There was an outbreak in one village in one village were we
setup containment very well, very strict. Came back, surprised
them; told them if I didn't come back, my scouts would be back
because I hired people to do the same thing. Then one day, I
arrived at this village. Actually, Dr. Malar was with me and the
containment was excellent, but the village leader called me over
and he said, "We're very proud of the containment and everything
you did and we owe you more credit than you know." And I said,
"What do you mean?" He said, "Well, the guard in front of the
village met an individual who was a scout for a Dacoit party
which are thieves, and they would come into these villages and
wreck the villages and rob the people. But the scout decided
that his group shouldn't rob this village because they don't
have to be vaccinated and show their vaccination scars. So they
went to the next village." And what the village leader told me
was, "If you go down the road, five kilometers, you might not
come back. Those people are very angry. We're very happy." So I
actually ran into this kind of activity. In fact, there was a
story going around our area where another band of Dacoits, they
stopped these Tata trucks that go up and down the highway, and
one truck they stopped was full of army sharp shooters who were
returning from a competition, and everybody learned that that
particular band of Dacoits didn't make it, they all were shot.
They robbed the wrong truck.
So this part of Bihar was loaded with political instability.
There was a big metal mine that was operating there, I think a
tin mine, that was blown up as a protest while I was there. So
it was an interesting time. Every Sunday while I was there, a
fellow would drive up in a jeep. Now, it's very unusual for
someone to just drive up in a jeep because gas was hard to get
and most jeeps that were there were WHO jeeps. So someone had a
private jeep. That was unusual. That was something equivalent to
being a movie star in that part of the world. I didn't want to
ask him how he could afford not only the jeep, but the gasoline,
but he would come with his son and we'd sit down and we'd have
breakfast. We would sit and talk and he told me he wanted his
son to get a Western education and this would be a good
introduction to what an American was like.
I want to mention at that time I had hair down to my shoulders
and I was known as the local hippie, anyway, I didn't pursue
this too much, but at the end, when I was ready to leave, I laid
out everything that I thought I wanted to live in India and that
was just about everything. The only things I took with me were
just a change of clothes and a camera, the little camera that I
took, and I left everything else there. I figured they needed it
more than me and they could enjoy it more than me, so I left
them a Zenith Transoceanic radio, Tony Lama leather cowboy
boots, sleeping bags, tents, just about everything I had, I left
there; and I had a lot of the workers come to say goodbye, and
I'll explain that in just a minute. But he shows up, and he
walks into my room and he says, "I want this, I want this, I
want this, and I want this." And I said, "Wait a minute. Take
one thing and let me give the rest to the others." He said,
"No." He said, "I want all of these. I want your radio, I want
your cowboy boots, I want your sleeping bag, I want your
jacket." Just like that; and then he said, "Maybe you don't get
it. Maybe you don't know who I am.
Remember the time when you went to the bank? With all that money
that was in - we'd go to the bank about once a month to deposit
our WHO money because we were paying the workers that helped us
and I had somewhere between 200 and 300 volunteers - they
weren't volunteers, they were paid workers. They're getting 2-5
Rupees a day so I had a payroll; and I'd have to get that money
from Patna and then put it in the bank. No one ever got close to
me and I'm walking with all this money under my jacket. He said,
"Remember the times that you were on the road? There were logs
blocking your jeep and you'd get out and take the logs and
remove them from the road. Did you ever get bothered by anybody
here? You just saw no crime." I said, "You're right." He said,
"Well, I'm the reason for that. I put a bounty on anybody who
would hurt you." And he said, "And I had someone following you
the whole time here to make sure that nothing happened to you."
He said, "You didn't realize the tension in this area and being
a Westerner, how you stood out. We wanted to eradicate smallpox
and we wanted you to succeed and this was my contribution to
make sure that you were going to be okay." I said, "Take it
all." I was so appreciative of being able to go home.
There was a day, I was homesick and I wanted to get this letter
off and I went to the post office and it was almost like going
to a judge. You looked up in a big platform and there was the
person up there and I said to him, "Please be sure I have all
the stamps necessary to send my letter home;" and the whole
front of the envelope was covered with stamps. When I checked
out in Delhi, the operations officer comes running up to me and
he says, "Oh, you're Rick Greenberg aren't you?" He said,
"Everybody knows about you. Everybody knows everything you've
been doing. Your letters are great." And I said, "What are you
talking about?" He said, "You know, every letter you mailed had
a return address on it, WHO New Delhi; and none of the letters
you mailed had the proper postage." So where I was, not even the
postmaster knew what kind of postage was needed to send an
international letter and I had to pay the operations officers a
small amount of money so that he could get paid back for having
mailed my letters off. So it gives you a little feel for the
remoteness. In fact, there were no telephones. I saw an
operating telegraph. Unbelievable! I went to where supposedly
there was a phone, and the phone was out of order and there was
a man sitting on the bench in front of the room, just like an
old restaurant where you go in and you see the hero walking in,
wanting to send a telegraph. So there it was right in front of
me; and a big, big, telegraph key, I mean, maybe three times the
size of what you picture they might look like and he's just
going like this.
So a lot of the reports, either they were in person when we
reported to Patna every month, took the trip up there or we sent
people by bus or train to get a message that we needed supplies,
it was very remote, a little bit like the movie Lawrence of
Arabia where you're just out in the middle of nowhere and if you
don't make the communication, it won't get through. It was kind
of fun to figure out how to survive in that environment, but it
was also very taxing. At the end of my stay, there was a very
special moment. I had I think four or five jeeps, two or three
motorcycles and about 200-300 people on payroll; and they all
felt grateful, or had a good feeling for eradicating smallpox.
You could sense the spirit; and I said to them, "What can I do
for you?" And they said, "We want a little piece of paper that
says that we did smallpox eradication in Rohtas." My district;
so it was surprising what you could dig up in the little
villages and there was a printer, so we printed out a little
wallet-sized card that said, "Blank worked in the smallpox
eradication program and I signed it." And I didn't think that
many people would show up, but about 300 people came that day
for their card; and it rained like crazy that day, and we were
going to have a picture. So everybody got their card and I
thought, well no one's going to come back the next day for the
picture because we couldn't take the picture that day because of
the rain. I wake up the next day and they're saying this, "Come
on, come on; time for the picture." They had a camera man out
there and he was going to take this fish-eyed picture, you know
and it rotates from one end to the other. I had my little
camera. I look out there and there must've been 200 people on
the lawn. The jeeps lined up, the motorcycles lined up, and I'm
in awe.
They remained overnight. Somehow, they found a place to stay
because these were people from all over the district. They
weren't local. They came from 50, 100 kilometers away and I
asked somebody, I said, "How in the world did you guys get
through the night?" And they said, "Well, everybody opened up.
We stayed in private homes, we stayed in school gymnasiums,
every possible person in the area just opened up for us and
everybody had a place to stay." And I cannot fathom how this all
took place, but it said a lot for the program that not only were
we over there getting something out of this and helping. But
these individuals, these people right there who lived there also
were getting something out of it, more than the money. They were
getting the self-esteem and pride that went along with the
program, and I'll cherish that day, and that picture hangs in my
house today, the one that I took in color, a little out of
focus, but there they all are, and so I have that.
On my way out through Patna, I had the opportunity to address in
the Bihar State Government the fact that for the first time, my
district, Rohtas was free of smallpox and that was another honor
when they asked me about the number of cases, I said, "There
were no more cases." So I actually had a chance to stand up in a
Regional Government Session in Bihar and make that pronouncement
and I won't forget that either.
On the way out of India, I met up with another EIS Officer, his
name was Jim Vizzy[inaudible name0:27:00] and he had been in
Delhi before me and had actually been in the hospital with
kidney stones, and Jim and I both wanted to see Nepal before we
left. So when the others took off we went to Nepal, and when we
got to Katmandu, he was passing another kidney stone. So we
called the hotel. Now, we're at a hotel. We really-you know, at
a hotel. My gosh!-we actually were at a hotel! We're back to
some resemblance of normalcy. The house doctor arrived and I
asked him for a syringe of morphine and he treated Jim with
painkiller, gave me a syringe of morphine, so everywhere I went
that day on the airplane, as tourist, to look at Mount Everest,
I'm carrying a syringe of morphine, I think it's morphine, I
don't know, some narcotic in my pocket. So I felt, what's going
to happen if they stop me and they search me and they find a
syringe full of a drug. But Jim survived and made it home and I
never had to use that syringe.
Just one little final mention, on the plane over to India, I met
a chief resident in ophthalmology from New York University
School of Medicine, and he talked to me a little bit about how
he's going to India and this plane was landing in Bombay. One
day, when we were doing our surveillance and searching in Bihar
where I was, I was at a market and I noticed they were carrying
off people to a tent. So I walked up to the tent because they
said there was some doctor up there and I wanted to see if there
was smallpox. He was there. There were flies, but there were
people on litters, people whose eyes were solid grey and they
obviously couldn't see, they had severe cataracts, and he was
there every five or 10 minutes, taking out a cataract; and he
was operating by flashlight. I looked at him and I said,
"Hello." And he looked at me and he said, "This is what I do on
my vacation time; to pay back for my family allowing me to get
this education in New York. I come back. This is where I live.
People don't have a clue how we grew up and the conditions that
we lived in and I'm just doing what I think is right. But
please, don't let anybody know." So I guess it is okay now so
many decades later. This wonderful little deed this doctor who
was doing to go back to Bihar and to voluntarily take out
cataracts, and he worked very hard under the most primitive of
conditions to get this job done.
So I need to thank the CDC for letting me be an EIS Officer and
whoever ask me to go to India, I certainly can say, it changed
my life and I probably have twice as many stories that I'm
forgetting at the moment, or don't want to tell, but it was an
eye-opening experience and I'm sure you're getting that from all
the people giving these oral histories. So, thank you.
Kerry White: I'm speechless, Dr. Greenberg. That was great. Thank you
so much for sharing your time with us.
[End of Audio - 0:31:17]
Richard Greenberg Oral History
July 12, 2008
Richard Greenberg describes is experiences in the smallpox eradication program in Bihar State, India in 1974.
