26 12 2286 https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/6d5a1e1404f5438ea282aaaef5ee22f3.jpg bc48be88f6f273f40238ff6efd93d765 https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/bea45593d2b48447984e83ae33645ab2.pdf 3f622a9eb6649dd4597eb78826583ba3 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> McNutt: This is an interview with Carolyn Olsen. It's July 14, 2006, and we're at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, and this is about her involvement with the West African Smallpox Eradication Program. This interview is being conducted as part of the reunion marking the 40th anniversary of the launch of this program. The interviewer is Kathryn McNutt. McNutt: I'm glad you're here. The purpose is to do an oral history. We hope to capture for future generations the memories that you have about all of the participants and their families in eradicating smallpox in West Africa. So, essentially we'll just kind of walk through your story and what your and your family's experiences were. You were involved in the Smallpox Eradication Program in Liberia. Could you tell me what years you were there? Olsen: We lived in Liberia from September '67 to May '70. McNutt: And what was your family situation. Olsen: My husband and I had just gotten married in March of '67. We came to CDC for training in July, August, and September, and then we went off to Liberia. McNutt: That's a bit of a transition. Olsen: Yes. We were in California before we came to Atlanta. So the weather in Atlanta was hot and humid, and when we arrived in Liberia, it was actually cooler and less humid. McNutt: Really? Olsen: Even though we were on the equator. McNutt: So, what was your experience? Kind of paint a picture for me. When you first got to Liberia, what were your living arrangements? Olsen: When we arrived in Liberia, the living arrangements were interesting. The house was outfitted so that you had your basic needs until your freight came. We were met at the airport, which was about 25 miles from town, and taken into town. Dr. Shalimar and his wife took us out to dinner. Then they took us to our little house and said that they would come back the next day. It was a Saturday. We were living in a kind of a compound, and right at the gate there was somebody else's packing crate that someone was living in. When your packing crates came, oftentimes the local people would take the box, which was very large, and make it into a house. It was probably 9:00 PM, but when you're on the equator, it gets dark at 6:00 PM and gets light at 6:00 AM. So we were going to go to bed. We had sheets on the windows because, again, we were just moving into this house. All of a sudden there was this bright light. So we opened windows, and a transformer on this pole was burning. We were going to call the fire department, but we realized we didn't have a telephone. So we just watched it and thought, "Well, if it comes to the house, the house is made of cinderblock." But the fire just kind of went out. And after it went out, we realized that we did have a telephone. However, the black rotary telephone that was under the bed had no cord or connection. Since we really didn't know where we were-and our neighbors were gone for the weekend, so-it was probably just as well that the telephone was inoperable. So that was an interesting start. McNutt: Is that when it hit you that you were in West Africa and not the States? Olsen: I think that when we stopped in Senegal before arriving in Liberia, that was when it hit that us that we were in a very different place. And living overseas then was very different than it is now. There was no email or operable telephone. And so basically for 3 years, we did not talk to our family. We sent letters and, if necessary, there was teletype and occasionally a telegram Also, occasionally at work, my husband would talk to CDC. But most of the time we were on our own.[ And, again, we didn't have a telephone-even though we were in the biggest city in the country. McNutt: Monrovia? Olsen: Yes. And on that first Monday, 2 days after we arrived, the USAID van came to get my husband to go to work. There were about 20 men on the porch, and the driver said to my husband, "Oh, they all want to work for your wife. They want to be the houseboy." I looked at them, and I thought, "How am I ever going to choose?" I'd never had house help. So I thought, "Well, I'll just take the first person, and I'll just have a different person every day until I pick somebody." McNutt: You're trying them out. Olsen: Trying them out. And so I told Timha I was only hiring him for one day. And in Liberia, they speak pidgeon English. It's a little different than English. So Timha came to work for me that day. He was an older man. I was only 25, so he probably was 35, but he seemed like an older man. And we didn't have anything in the house, and so I thought, "What can he do? Well, he could wash some clothes." So I had him wash my husband's shirts and a couple of things because we'd been traveling. After he finished that, he hung all our clothes on the bushes outside so that they could get dry. I thought that I could bring them in, so I said, he could go. And then I looked a little later, and I thought the shirts were mildewing because they all had blue and green on them. So I brought the clothes in and I used all the different cleaners to get the spots out, and I was thinking, "Boy, things really mildew fast here." So when Dennis came home for lunch, I told him we had to buy a dryer. Well, the next day came and everybody was on my porch again. Timha was there again, and I noticed that he was wearing a country shirt, made out of indigo. I realized then that when he was wringing the wet clothes, he had put them up against his shirt, and the dye in his shirt had bled on all of our clothing. Well, luckily, the driver had a friend or a brother or something, and he introduced me to David Parker, who then became our houseboy for the next 3 years. He was a very nice man, and it worked out very well. McNutt: You didn't have to try all of them. Olsen: Didn't have to try. And Timha became our gardener. That was the job he wanted. He didn't want to be the houseboy. Another episode with Timha was funny. The farmers do slash-and-burn in the fields. So I asked him to clean up the yard, and all of a sudden I look out and there's fire. Everything he cut down is burning. But other than that, keeping the house was easy. McNutt: You had electricity, you had a stove, refrigerator, a dryer. Olsen: We bought a dryer, and we had a stove that was furnished. The stove used gas, and so we always had to make sure, if we were going to have company, that we had enough gas so that all of a sudden we didn't run out in the middle of entertaining. Somehow, USAID [US Agency for International Development] would only give us one gas canister at a time. But the people were very, very nice. We felt very comfortable. And the American community was nice. But the smallpox program didn't quite fit with the embassy and it didn't quite fit with USAID, so we were kind of our own program. I am an environmental engineer, and so I wanted to find a job. I found one, working for a firm that was doing an extension of the airport. But then someone who I didn't know took a job that supposedly took a job away from a local person. The upshot was that no dependents could work except as schoolteachers or nurses, so I couldn't work. And then they approached me and asked if I would substitute at the American school. So I taught 7th through 12th-grade math. I had never taught before, but somebody told me the first day of school that you need to be really tough. So I was really tough. Any time the kids were not good, I would immediately give them a test. So after about a week, they just knew they were going to be good when they came in. And, having never had any education classes, I just taught them like I was taught. Years later, it was rewarding when I met some of my students who had actually done well. It was a relief that I didn't do permanent damage. McNutt: They can't blame you for anything. Olsen: Right, right. And then, I guess it was the second year, the principal or the superintendent of the American school crossed the Liberian government and was asked to leave Liberia, so I became superintendent. One day I was sitting in my office and the phone- I told you the phones didn't work, but all of a sudden the phone on my desk rang. I was so excited. I picked it up and said, "American Cooperative School," and they said, "Oh, wrong number," and it never rang again. But the thing that was so nice about our African experience, it gave us a feeling not only for Africa but also for what French countries were like, since we took trips, as part of the smallpox program, to Ivory Coast, which is a francophone country. And we were given vacations every 2 years or so. On our first vacation, in l968, we went with a Peace Corps charter to East Africa for 6 weeks. That was when Jomo Kenyatta was Prime Minister of Kenya, and Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya were on such good terms with each other that they had common currency. McNutt: Really? Olsen: The drought had not occurred yet in Ethiopia. It was a very kind and gentle country under Emperor Haile Selassie. So we saw part of Africa that no longer exists, and it was a very enjoyable, interesting experience. It was also interesting to see how that part of Africa was different than West Africa. Now, we weren't always just going on vacations, but we were able to go to Europe also. Neither of us had been there, and to spend 6 weeks in Europe just wandering around was really interesting. It was winter, so we ended up in a lot of art museums and other museums. It gave us a whole different perspective on the world. McNutt: Sure. Olsen: Those breaks were nice because, when we went back to Liberia, we could kind of look at life a little differently. In Liberia, there were only a couple paved roads, and we just looked at the same thing every day. And as far as the smallpox program goes, I did not go up- country with Dennis because there was really no place to stay. Later on, when we lived in India, I used to travel with him because they had guest houses and different places where we could stay. But oftentimes he would stay with Peace Corps volunteers, and so a lot of the Peace Corps volunteers would then come to stay with us when they came to Monrovia. Toward the end of our stay, we got very excited because cholera was all of a sudden detected in Sierra Leone. They anticipated it coming into Liberia, so Dennis had an opportunity to meet with President Tubman, who was one of what they called an honorable. His parents had come back to Africa after Abraham Lincoln was president, when many of the descendants of slaves in the United States went back to Liberia. So Liberia was never colonized. But Liberia had an American influence. Their Pledge of Allegiance is just like ours, with a few words changed, and their flag is just like ours except it has only one star. And during the Second World War, Roberts Field was used as a base where the planes would fly to Africa from Brazil and then up to Europe. In fact, sometimes you would see houses made of military runway materials. But in theory President Tubman was a benevolent dictator. And when we came back, we were in Washington for a short time. I would tell people that Liberia was the kind of place that, if you went out at night, you always took a flashlight because there were no lights except the Moon and the stars, and you wanted to make sure you didn't step on a snake or step in a hole. You had no fear of any of the people. And at that time in Washington, DC, if you heard someone walking up behind you, you immediately turned to see who was there. I remember seeing the soldiers. They didn't carry real guns; they carried wooden guns. And oftentimes, after a parade, they would carry their shoes on their guns because they weren't used to wearing shoes, but they had to wear them for the parade. McNutt: How interesting. Olsen: But socially, we had to make your own entertainment. McNutt: Sure. Olsen: The last year we were there, they brought in television. But before that, it was the BBC news. And, actually, Liberia was 45 minutes off of Greenwich Mean Time. During World War II, there was supposedly a German ship off the shore that sent word they wanted to meet with the president of Liberia at 10 o'clock, and so Liberia changed its time so that the Germans would be late, as 10 o'clock became 10:45 Liberian standard time. McNutt: No way! Olsen: Yes. But sometimes people would say that Liberia was like a poorly done United States. But we were in our 20s, and it was our first assignment. We had a very enjoyable time and we met lots of people. At the American school, about 50% of the children who I taught were Americans, about 25% were from other embassies, and the other 25% were Liberian students. Of this last group, some had parents, who were doctors and honorables, and some students were on scholarship. So it was a nice blending. We got to know people from all kinds of different embassies, like the Asian embassies. And if you were their child's schoolteacher, you were a very special person. The students seemed to get together very well. They took care of each other. McNutt: So tell me a bit more about the social life. You were probably one of the younger couples there, I'm assuming. What were the social activities that you did? Olsen: There were a lot of cocktail parties, and you found excuses to have parties, like for St. Patrick's Day. The social life on weekends was really out at the Voice of America transmitter site, which was about 20 miles out of town. They had to maintain short grass around the transmitter, so they made it into a 9- hole golf course. The golf holes were sand with a little bit of oil mixed in. People kept the sand raked. So if you got out on the green, it was like putting on the bottom of a sink: the ball went down toward the hole, like water toward a drain. So you really had an unfair advantage. But it was very interesting. And we all had young Liberians as our caddies. They lived near Harrisburg, which was where Voice of America was. My regular caddy was Michael. He would make sure there were no snakes where I was going. But I never had a bad lie because Michael could pick up a golf ball with his toes, and by the time I got up to my ball, it was sitting on top of a nice little tuft of grass waiting to be hit. One year before Christmas, Michael said, "Missy"-they called a man Boss Man, and the ladies were called Missy-"Missy, are you going to get me a Christmas present?" "Well, Michael, what would you like?" And he said, "I was looking in the book, and I think I would like roller skates." Now, there was no pavement. I mean, there was a dirt road to get there, there was a dirt parking area, and there was grass on the golf course. And so I said, "I think that you really don't want roller skates." But in ways it was kind of sweet, the simplicity of life and not realizing some things. Another sweet moment was when we all made curtains. You could always tell when people came to Liberia by their curtains. People who came in the rainy season had bright curtains; people who came in the sunny season had dark curtains. I used to sew things, and I always had material left over. And David, who worked for us, said, "Are you going to use that material?" So I gave it to him. And one day, Dennis was up-country vaccinating in a certain area. David's wife and children were in that area, so he went along so that his children would definitely get vaccinated. And they took a picture. And there were my bedroom curtains-everybody was wearing them. McNutt: Oh, my gosh. Olsen: But I'm trying to think of some of the other social things we did. I remember our going-away party. Usually when you invited people for these cocktail parties, there were always so many things to do that maybe only 50% would come. And just about the time we were leaving the country, there was an outbreak of what they thought was smallpox. It was way out in the hinterland, where you had to hike in. It turned out to be monkeypox. But Dennis and his replacement, Randy Moser and the team hiked in. And so for our farewell party-and the Moser's welcome-to- Liberia party-they were all still up-country. But Barbara Moser and I were putting on this party, and everybody showed up. And our house was just like they used to stuff Volkswagens: it was just full of people. And about halfway into the party, Dennis and Randy arrived in their Dodge truck. One lady, as she was leaving, said to me, "That was a really good cheese ball." "Oh. Did you like it?" She said, "Yes. My friend and I ate the whole thing. We got stuck in the corner and we couldn't get out, so we would get drinks from out the window, and we just ate the whole cheese ball." I think the thing that was nice about Africa is it gave you a totally different perspective of the world and gave you a wonderment for travel, for things you can do-or the things you try to do anyway. McNutt: So it's great to have that perspective in your early or middle 20s. Olsen: Right, yes. McNutt: Changes your whole outlook. Olsen: Some of the people who are here at the reunion I have never met before. They were in the first group in '66. We were kind of the fill-in group, so we had a much smaller group. There were maybe 10 or 12 of us. So, except for meetings that were held about once a year in someplace like Abidjan, we didn't meet the other people because Africa was so remote that to get from one country to the other you often would have to fly to France first. McNutt: I've heard that. That's crazy. Olsen: And, as opposed to India, where we traveled all over, Africa was hard to travel in. But we had a lot of people from CDC come through -and it was always fun people, like Jim Hicks [James W. Hicks]. Then we would catch up on the news, because we were never quite sure what was happening in the world. Bad news travels fast though, so when Martin Luther King was killed, we knew within hours of its happening; the same thing with Bobby Kennedy. Like I said, bad news traveled very, very quickly. And it was hard to convince Liberians that there was actually a man on the Moon. That was happening while we were there. The local people would say, "Oh, yes, Missy, oh, yes, there's somebody on the Moon." But they had never flown; they had never really been aware of so many things out there. McNutt: It was 2 different worlds coming together. Olsen: Right. But, then again, you don't have to be educated to be smart, or to be wise. I think that all of us learned a lot from the different people we encountered. And at that time, since Liberia had a heavy American influence, we would have a lot of American foods. We had 2 supermarkets, run by Lebanese. The Lebanese also were the jewelers. When I went into the supermarket, I would check the cottage cheese to see if it was green or not. Or I would buy one box of cereal and take it home, and if it didn't have weevils, I'd go back and buy a whole bunch of boxes. But weevils and ants were just everywhere, so we kept everything that wasn't canned in the refrigerator. Even when I baked a cake, I took it out of the oven and put it in the refrigerator. If you left it sitting out for a little while, you'd come back and it would have ants all over it. And if I made spaghetti, I had a strainer so that, after it started boiling, I could scoop all the weevils off the top. Otherwise, it would look like you had pepper in your spaghetti. Flour was the hardest thing. You had to sift your flour because the weevils didn't go through the holes, and then you'd throw them away and you'd make whatever you were going to with the flour. McNutt: What did you do for water? Olsen: Originally, we were on a well. We had to boil the water and put it through a filter. We had these big tall filters with clay candles on them. Once a week, the filters would be boiled and cleaned so that we always had water. Now I was teaching school. One day I was taking a shower. I was totally lathered, and the power went off. So the water went off. So I called David, who brought me the water from the dehumidifier and I poured that on. I still needed more water. So then it was ice water from the refrigerator. So even to this day, I wash my hair, rinse it off, wash one arm, rinse it off, just in case. McNutt: Tools of the trade. Olsen: And after that day, we had a large plastic garbage can that we always stored water in, and every couple of weeks we would replace the water. [Toward the end of our tour, we were actually on a water system, but we still boiled our water just as a precaution. We had excellent restaurants. Salvatore's had probably the best Italian food I've ever eaten in my whole life because they had to make everything from scratch. So they had their own pasta, their own cannelloni. When I went to Italy, it was almost anticlimactic because I had better food in Liberia. And eating out was a very social thing. We ate out quite a bit. There was also a Lebanese restaurant. And this is kind of funny. They had an expansion, and the back area-again, you're talking 100% humidity, 90°-100°F-was decorated like an ice cave, with blown white plaster. You'd go back in there, and they'd have air-conditioning blowing down. They made wonderful hamburgers and shawarma sandwiches. And since I worked at the school, some of the teachers were from different neighborhoods. We had a Haitian French teacher, and we had some Liberian teachers. It was a nice way to get to know different nationalities and different people and work with them. McNutt: What did your family think about your taking off at age 25 for Africa? Olsen: Oh, I had already been to Brazil with the Peace Corps,. I grew up in Wyoming and my first job was in Los Angeles, and I had never been to California. Being the youngest of 7, I was a bit of an adventurer. McNutt: So what special training did you have? You mentioned training at the CDC. What prepared you or your husband for West Africa? Olsen: The participants all went through the EIS [Epidemic Intelligence Service] course, so even though my husband is not a doctor, he went through the course that's usually reserved for the EIS Officers. McNutt: Is that a 2-year course? Olsen: No. It was a 3-month summer course. The EIS Officers who were staying then worked with CDC for 2 years. But we went off to Africa. So there was a lot of statistics and epidemiology, even mechanics. The spouses were invited to attend any of the sessions that we wanted to, which was quite interesting. Plus they had another course, one taught by Dr. Waddy [B. B. Waddy], who was very English and had spent many, many years in Africa. He talked about tropical diseases and the African culture. Other people talked about things like the weather. So we had demographics, history, and geography. But when we first arrived in Liberia, we had very, very little because you were only allowed to carry 40 pounds of materials with you. So we had a couple books and a few other things. But then CDC sent some program materials, so, with nothing else to read, I read the book on tropical medicine. And one by one, you followed the pictures and would see the diagnosis. And not being a doctor, I would think, "Oh, I've got this rash." I think I needed something else to do. I had a couple bouts of food poisoning. One was caused by strawberries. They looked just like the kind of strawberries you bought at the grocery store, but they had probably been frozen and thawed a couple of times on their way to Africa. They used to actually send California lettuce and California celery to Liberia. It did not come by airplane; it came by ship. McNutt: And it made it? Olsen: Yes. We would save the lettuce for special occasions. We had these green Tupperware containers. If you took the core out of the lettuce and put the lettuce in a paper towel, it would last. I'm sure it had no food value, but it was like, "Oh, lettuce, lettuce from the States!" And the tsetse fly is in that part of Africa, so they couldn't raise cattle because they would be killed by the tsetse fly. So all the meat was imported. About the only thing you would get locally was chicken. McNutt: That answers a huge question for me because I did not see many cattle when I was in Liberia in June, and I was wondering why not. Olsen: There is some other bug that gets into clothing that is washed. The bug is in the water, and so you have to iron everything. McNutt: Interesting. Olsen: Yes. And at that time, there were parts of Liberia that were not mapped, because the heat would cause steam to rise in the rainforest. We had some friends who were with the USGS [US Geological Survey]. They kept waiting for a clear day. But if you look at the 1967 USGS map, there was a section of the Liberia map , they probably have mapped the area by now because of the satellites. But I'll tell you about one of our regular activities. Everybody wanted to have some African art. It was very "in" in the States to have African art, and so people would buy different things. There was a group of vendors or sellers, who were called Charleys. So there would be Charley number 1, Charley number 2, Charley number 3. And if you purchased something from them, you could actually write check to "Charley Number 3". Liberia used the US dollar. So I have cancelled checks to Charley number so-and-so. The Charley's must have had a great network. You would hear a noise on your front porch, and then you'd hear the doorbell ring. You would open the door, and there would be like a little store. The Charley would have laid down all his artifacts, and then you would look to see if there was anything you wanted. They would often come on weekends when most people were at home, and we would bargain and bargain. The Muslim Charley's, would sometimes take a break and go say their prayers and come back, and you would bargain some more. My husband didn't like to bargain, so I would be out on the porch to bargain, and then I would bring an artifact in the house and he'd, "Oh, that is so ugly, I don't like it in our house!" and I would go bring it back out and the price would be lowered. One day, I started bargaining because I was bored and there was nothing else to do. I was probably at maybe $10 and the Charley was at $15, and after an hour we were going nowhere. And then I decided I would use a different technique, and I said, "Well, $7." And he looked at me and said, "Missy, $7, two aspirin, you give me a headache." And I still have the artifact. It looks like somebody made it out of mud. It's an interesting, kind of strange piece. One time, my husband was up-country. We had night watchmen, so I felt perfectly safe. One of the Charleys that I hadn't dealt with before came to the door. He had a fine Senefo artifact. It was the only piece he had, and so I knew there wasn't going to be a lot of bargaining. I think I probably ended up spending $100 or maybe $125. It's a beautiful piece, and I must get it into a museum someday. But the next night the doorbell rings, and there he is again, and he wants to buy it back from me for $250. So evidently, somebody had heard about it and had offered him much more. But I said, "No, no, no. It is sold." McNutt: Someone within your group heard? Olsen: One of his customers, because we would describe art pieces we were interested in obtaining. The Charley would then try to find them. . If you had company, especially when anybody from the States was visiting, the Charleys knew it. If you were having a cocktail party, all of a sudden you would hear a ring, and there would be tie-dye on the porch banisters and different Africa items at their little store on the porch. And then, sometimes rogues-they didn't call them burglars in Liberia-came in at night. They never hurt anybody. McNutt: While somebody was there? Olsen: Yes. So at night, when you went to bed, you locked the front door, the kitchen door, and every door in the house. You had these big skeleton keys. Then you locked yourself in the bedroom. And if you were lucky, you had a bathroom attached to the bedroom, but if not, you locked the bathroom too. And off to bed you went. The first incident occurred the first time my husband was out of the country. It was my first night alone in Africa and I had locked myself in. I hear this tap-tap on the window, and I think, "My goodness, somebody's coming in." Finally, I looked out, and there was my husband throwing rocks at the window. He had come back early, and when he rang the doorbell, it rang in the kitchen, and I was 2 locked doors away. McNutt: Your husband was trying to break in. Olsen: Yeah. But then one time I got up in the morning, went into the kitchen, to turn the coffee on, and noticed that we had been broken in. I ran out of the kitchen and locked the door, and I said, "We've been robbed." And Dennis said, "What did they take?" I said, "The water filter." And he said, "What?" And I said, "They were in the kitchen. The only thing I could see is that the water filter was gone and the window was gone." (We had these sliding windows). It was just before Thanksgiving, and the embassy had brought in turkeys for us. So we had 3 turkeys in our kitchen freezer, one for Dr. Thompson and his family and 2 for us. Well, the rogues had taken 2 turkeys and a kitchen curtain to wrap them in because they were frozen solid. That's all they took. We all had tin roofs, and when it would rain, it was like somebody playing the drums. We had the most exciting electrical storms. There were big booms, and the power would go out. The storms would come in off the ocean. The robberies were timed. Just as the thunder boom resounded, the rogues would take the window out. In our bedroom, we slept with our heads against the wall. On the other side of the wall was where the burglars had actually come in the house. We didn't hear them at all. We were in embassy housing. So Dennis went to the embassy to report that we had been rogued. The burglars had gone through the whole area; they had taken money; they had taken stereo equipment. Dennis said he felt kind of strange saying they took 2 turkeys and the kitchen curtain. The robbers had tried to get out of the kitchen, but they couldn't get the door open, so they were confined to that little area. McNutt: That's funny. So, security-wise, you weren't worried while you were there. Olsen: No. We were never in fear. I mean, there was just no concern. McNutt: It was relatively stable out there? Olsen: Very, very stable. Again, you had a night guard. But you paid him, and I'm sure he paid whoever it was that was stealing so they wouldn't come and rogue you. I have a letter that a night guard wrote me. He was a very old man. The letter said, "Dear Mother, please buy me a bed so I can sleep on your couch while I guard. I might have considered his request if he had called me Missy, but "Dear Mother." McNutt: What kind of problems did you have in establishing working relationships with the African counterparts there? Olsen: Well, I wasn't working, except at the school. I really didn't have problems. By that time, I could understand pidgeon English, and usually they were a very kind and quiet people. Many times, the little boys who played soccer with a grapefruit in the vacant lot next door would come over to get a drink of water or just to say hello. Or they would pick the papaya off my tree and then want to sell it to me. But we never felt threatened at all. I'm sure things have changed-the world has changed-but then it was very nice. They made beautiful tie-dye. I used to buy tie-dyed material from the lady who lived under the bridge. Her name was Mama Sony. I would take other American women to her. I think sometimes people were reluctant to interact with local people but I was very comfortable with them because I was teaching Liberian children at school and working with Liberians. So it was very natural. At that time, there was a large international population, too. There was the German store, and there was a large Irish population, so we made many international friends. We would get invited to their houses for dinner, and so we'd have all kinds of different foods. McNutt: So, what about your husband? Within the smallpox program, how did he or the team work to get people to sign on to the program and agree to being vaccinated? Did they have to go to tribal leaders? Olsen: They didn't have the kind of health systems then that they had in some of the colonial countries. Oftentimes they would go to the different villages. And all of his staff were Liberian. He oversaw program operations, and Dr. Thompson was in charge of the medical aspect. I don't know; he'll probably describe it. But his office was incredible. It looked like it washed out to sea and came back. His office was in an interior room, and somebody had painted it a few years before, but when they painted it, if there was a bookcase, they just painted around the bookcase, so you could see where the furniture had been in the past. I remember one time he was really upset because, again, it was really humid and really hot, and he had gone to the USAID mission and asked if he could have an air-conditioner. And they said, "No, that's a Liberian building, you can't have an air conditioner, or everybody will want one." The statement that was made was, "You have the benefit of working with local people. Therefore, you should be able to cope with the local conditions." But he enjoyed working with the Liberian staff. Years later, he went to Liberia on short-term consultancies. His staff were still there and were very pleased to see him. He went up country, where he found out that his driver was now a paramount chief in one of the villages. On his way back, there was a pole thrown across the highway, which meant stop. It was placed there because John Masaquoi wanted to give him a present. He had this country shirt. He stepped aside and said to Dennis, "Tell Carolyn to wash it in Clorox; it's been under the bed." We have only fond memories. We have things that probably no longer exist. They made country money. Nimba Mountain had such rich iron ore that they just pounded the iron ore into 6- inch sticks with kind of a forked end and a round circle at the top and twisted, unrefined iron; one piece of country money was worth a penny. Years later, I met somebody whose cousin had lived in Liberia back in the Firestone days. She used to go into the bush. In the afternoon, they would tell stories, so she made a whole book of notes. After Liberia had all its problems, she went back to her notes that she had taken in the '40s, and even though she was in her 70s, she made a book on Liberian folk tales. It is entitled, You Can't Unsneeze a Sneeze. And reading those tales just brought back so many memories. Food, for instance. They have one thing that's made out of casava called dumb boy, and it is to make you feel full. And you're a dumb boy if you don't swallow it quick because if you chew on it, it swells in your mouth and you can't swallow it. McNutt: That's interesting. Olsen: And then you would eat it with just a little bit of what they called soup, which is kind of like our chili. McNutt: Wow. I love to hear these stories. You said that you did a lot of work, and you spent a lot of time with the locals as well as the expatriates. What was it like coming back to the States? How did you fit in again? Olsen: We came to Atlanta for about a month, and then Dennis was assigned to San Francisco Bay area. One of the hardest things was going back into the grocery stores, places where you had so many options. You had a whole row of dog food. We had gotten so used to having a limited amount. In Liberia, if the ship came in, everybody knew that there was fresh or at least new products. I think the part that amazes me is when you return to the states and you start to tell people about your experiences, and suddenly their eyes glaze over. Then you realize that you are now a part of a different group. If you really want to communicate about travel or about experiences, you have to find a new group of people who also have done similar things or who are well-read. I find that people who are well-read oftentimes enjoy the same interests. The thing about reading or seeing movies of these areas, be it Darfur or whatever, you don't get the heat and the smell. And the heat and the smell are just as much a part of everything as everything else. I think it gives you an appreciation in the United States of many things, but at the same time, it makes you realize that you're fortunate and you need to give something back. McNutt: What was the toughest problem you faced, and how did you handle it? Olsen: It must have been so tough, I put it out of my mind. I feel like I had no problems. Oh, I know. This is a funny problem, but it seemed traumatic at the time. They didn't have parallel parking. You pulled in. And a parking spot in front of the grocery store was always prized. We had a little green Volkswagen, and I'd just been to the grocery store. I was backing out. I looked and no cars were coming; it was clear. And I backed up and I ran into a car, a big black Mercedes. McNutt: Oh no! Olsen: And a lady came out. I could tell she was an honorable's wife. I was in the middle of the main street, but all of a sudden, I was totally surrounded by Liberians. Everybody was talking about this great wreck. The woman was distressed. The policeman was there. And I am the only white face in the crowd. All of a sudden this very tall black man comes and puts his arm around me and stands next to me. He was the husband of one of the schoolteachers at the American School. Dennis was up-country, and so I gave the woman my name and I told her we would have her car fixed. What had happened was, she had passed my parking spot, but her friend said, "Oh, there's somebody coming out," so she backed up, and so she ran into me. McNutt: She should have been looking for you. Olsen: She should have been looking for me. So I was looking for oncoming traffic, and she is backing up down the street. Bang! I was so distressed. I went home and knitted. Whenever I'm distressed, I knit, so I knitted. And when Dennis came back, I said, "You've got to talk to Honorable so-and-so because I ran into his wife's car." Well, the honorable said, "Forget it. She was distressed because she had just gotten it out of the shop from her last wreck." But, I mean, when you're suddenly surrounded, I mean, it's scary. McNutt: So you were glad that man was able to help you. Olsen: Oh, yes, yes. He said he was driving down the street and he saw this big crowd of people. When somebody sees a crowd, something must be happening. He said, "And there you are in the middle of it." McNutt: So, back to smallpox, at what point did you think that smallpox would actually be eradicated in Liberia and West Africa? Olsen: Well, I have to tell you, I've never seen a case of smallpox. As close as we came was toward the end, when they found a case of monkeypox. It was the first time they had found monkeypox transmitted to man, and the lesions looked like smallpox, but it didn't manifest in the rest of the family. And so a lot of people went up into that area. They would take a scab and send it to CDC to be verified. So it was kind of like the show-and- tell. But it was kind of an exciting time. But, like I said, I never saw a single case of smallpox. Evidently, somebody had come through and vaccinated the people years before. Or perhaps, because of their isolation, smallpox just never happened there. But there was so much migration. People from other countries moving in and moving out. McNutt: The tribes aren't divided along country lines. Olsen: No. McNutt: So, had your husband seen smallpox there? He was more up- country. Olsen: Not in Liberia. He saw it in Sierra Leone. He went there short- term. One day we were driving. Our car hadn't arrived, so we always took the taxis. And I said, "Dennis, look! I think I see smallpox!" And here was this little kid sitting there by the road. They have what they call the sandy society, and they have mud stuck all over them, and it looked like some kind of disease. But taxis were interesting. The taxi drivers spoke in pidgeon English. You could take a bus for 5 cents, or you could take a taxi for 25 cents. But you would have to flag the taxis down. Even the policemen didn't have police cars; they used taxis. You would take a taxi up-country. Our Peace Corps friends would go down to the taxi area to catch a taxi up-country. One time the taxi driver was very aggressive. His fare was inexpensive to take them all the way back up to their village. They went with him, and the person in front was not talking. About 5 miles out of Monrovia they realized the passenger in the front was dead. The taxi driver was taking him back to his village. McNutt: Oh, my God. Olsen: One night we had a group of Peace Corps people come to visit. It was late, so we were going to take them back to where they were living in Monrovia. We were going down the main street; 4 of us were in the back of a Volkswagen, and 2 big guys were up front. And all of a sudden this taxi pulls around and tries to stop us. And pretty soon this taxi goes around us again, yelling, "Stop in the name of the law!" So we pulled over, and this policeman, who was drunk, comes to our car and says, "You're under arrest! You have 2 people in the front, you have 4 in the back. That's 7; that's too many." And he said, "Follow me. I'm taking you to the police station." And we're thinking, well, should we go or should we not because we had always been instructed to go to the embassy. The one fellow in the front with Dennis was Peace Corps, and he was teaching law. He said, "I'd like to see this part of the law." So we proceeded to the police station. It was midnight. So Dennis and the arresting officer walk into the police station. They have to wake up the policeman on duty. So now the policeman and the arresting officer come out to the car, and you can tell that this policeman is really tired. He looks in the car and says, "Professor!" The policeman was one of the lawyer's students. So policeman said to the arresting officer, "Now, I know these people and they are okay, so we will let them go." It's now like 12:30 AM. Just as we're leaving, the officer who had tried to arrest us said, "Okay, I'll let you go this time, but if I see you out after midnight, there'll be no mercy." Policemen also directed traffic. If they arrested you, they would get in the car so that they could take them to the police station. But we had these little driver's licenses, little red books. The people who work there for business had told us that if we ever got stopped to just put a dollar in the license and give it back, and they'd let us go. Well, I had one friend. She was downtown, and this policeman started to give her a ticket, and she had done nothing wrong. So she proceeded to give him the riot act. He took her license and put a dollar in it and gave it to her! McNutt: How funny! Olsen: But, again, you would go to the movie and you would always have some young fellow watch your car. When you got out, you would give him a quarter or 50 cents, and your car was safe. Your car probably would have been safe anyway, but it's just the way that they made some extra money. But the movies were interesting because it was back when they had reels. Sometimes you would see the middle reel, the first reel, and then you had to try to figure out the movie. Or they would have broken it and spliced it in backwards or something. When we saw "Wait Until Dark," the opening scene showed the plane backing into the airport port from the sky. McNutt: Whoa! Is there anything from your experience or from the program that you were involved with that you would change? Olsen: Nothing I would change. It was such a wonderful opportunity. I think that it is a shame that young people don't have that opportunity now. You know, Peace Corps sometimes gives them an opportunity. But, actually, they usually work at a grassroots level, and this was more on the professional level. The thing that was kind of amazing was that most of the people in the smallpox program were probably 10-20 years younger than their counterparts. They were all in their mid-20s or early 30s, and most of the doctors and people in Liberia that Dennis worked with were probably in their 40s or 50s. On the social level, it probably took us 2 years before we started getting invited to Liberian houses. When we were in India, it was much easier. In India, we lived in what was basically an Indian house, and we would have different people come to a party at our house, which was probably not as good as what they lived in. So then when we would be in their city or New Delhi, they did not feel uncomfortable inviting us to their house. So that made it much easier to interact. But I think in Liberia, there was a status level that was involved. Even though the salaries weren't that good and the housing wasn't that good compared to stateside, they were still better than what many people had. When the power went out, we had a game we would play. Whoever had the flashlight would have the almanac and ask questions. The other entertainment, if it was light, was watching the geckos. But I think that we benefited because of the people who went before us, in 1966. So I would say the training for the group that went in '67 was good. The other thing is, Bill Foege [William H. Foege] and the Thompsons had had to leave Nigeria, because of the civil war, so they were at CDC during our training and gave us first-hand experiences of what it was like. And different people would tell you things to take to your post. We were very spoiled as far as having American foods. People who came to visit from Mauritania or Guinea would think they'd died and gone to heaven because they could have dill pickles and ice cream and all these things that you couldn't get in other countries. McNutt: So, how did participating with this project change your life? Olsen: I would say that, being an environmental engineer, it gave me more of a global view of the world, and also a real appreciation for water , especially the needs of people for clean drinking water. Unless you have lived in a situation where you really have to plan what you're going to drink, you don't have that same appreciation for water. And remember we lived in Africa before bottled water. Nobody carried bottled water around, and you didn't go to the store and buy a case of bottled water. So you had to make sure that your water and your food were clean and good. That was a challenge. McNutt: And did this first experience contribute to later work experience? You talked about India. Olsen: Yes, India, and in my profession. I was a utility manager, and I was on the board of American Water Works and Water for People. Then I was the president of the nonprofit Water for People. For the last group, I would talk to people, trying to raise money for water projects. And being a woman in a professional field, Africa was, to some degree, a matriarchal type society, but in India you realize how downtrodden women are. But in any society, it's the women who end up carrying the water. McNutt: And the little ones. Olsen: The little ones, yes. And so it just gave me a real appreciation, for different cultures. And to know that almost everywhere you go, there are people who are wiser than you. McNutt: So is there anything else that you want to add? Any words of wisdom for the next generation of public health workers? I mean, you've had so many nuggets already. Any last statements? Olsen: I think that it is very good that we were able to see the world and see the problems of the world. I think also that people need to realize that there are problems here that are also very trying, and we need to be aware of that. People really need to know about health issues. Maybe we don't have the tropical diseases, but we have the overweight and the diabetes and the other things that affect that same socioeconomic group here. Water and wastewater are my areas of special interest. Global warming and cultural changes are going to see the development public health problems that we don't even envision yet. McNutt: Thank you for your time. Olsen: Thank you. McNutt: What a wonderful discussion. # # # </pre> Player html for embedded player to stream video content <iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/310135748%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-Hx2bg&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;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 2006-07-14 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/158ws emory:158ws Subject The topic of the resource CDC Smallpox Eradication Life as expatriate wife USAID WHO Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 753573744 bytes audio/x-aiff Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McNutt, Kathryn (Interviewer); Rollins School of Public Health; Graduate Student Olsen, Carolyn (Interviewee); CDC; Wife of Operations Officer 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 OLSEN, CAROLYN Description An account of the resource Carolyn Olsen recalls life as an expatriate in Monrovia, Liberia in the period of 1966-1970 while her husband, Dennis Olsen, served as Operations Officer. Carolyn talks of taking a job as a teacher in Monrovia, expatriate social activities, and daily life living in Monrovia. Carolyn also briefly compares life with the smallpox program in Liberia to their later posting in India. Language A language of the resource English https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/d9d3344841f7ee1e31cbf1119e18815e.jpg b119c483da7ce5e9c4aff054054e1608 https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/b9b13dc7be656fa4160662dd5f22a075.pdf 9d00fbcda7d3d95f10ace91b05468fde 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: Dennis Olsen Audio File Transcribed: January 24, 2009 Melissa McSwegan: This is an interview with Dennis Olsen on July 11th, two thousand eight at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia about his role in the smallpox eradication campaign. The Melissa McSwegan is Melissa McSwegan. With this interview we're hoping to capture for future generations the memories of participants and their families involved in eradicating small pox. 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. Now, for the record could you please state your name and that you know you are being recorded. Dennis Olsen: My name is Dennis G. Olsen and I know that I'm being recorded. Melissa McSwegan: Okay, great. Thank you. So to start out with could briefly describe your childhood, your college education and how that led into you working in public health? Dennis Olsen: Well, I grew up in Bend Oregon and all of my pre-college schooling there. Went off to the University of Oregon then for my college work and I can honestly say that none of that prepared me for a role in public health. My first inclination to be involved in public health was through the University of Oregon placement service where I met a CDC colleague E. J. Spike and I was recruited at the CDC and spent thirty two years with the organization. Melissa McSwegan: Okay. Well great. Well how did you then become involved with the smallpox eradication [inaudible 01.53]? Dennis Olsen: I was first recruited to come back to Atlanta out of my assignment in Los Angeles California to actually be involved with the early malaria eradication effort and as the politics of that were working their way through Washington and it was determined that what the plans had been were not going to come fruition, I was contacted to ask if I wanted to go to West Africa for smallpox eradication. Agreed to do that, got married to my lovely wife and off we went to the country of Liberia and spent three years there. After returning from that we knew then eventually that the Indian program was going on and made overtures to be one of the people who went to India for a three month assignment. At the conclusion of that and the enjoyment of that work and the colleagues from around the world and the imminent success of the program I asked if I could go back for a longer term and was - we were accepted and returned for a two year stint and that time I was named the WHO World Health Organization coordinator of the smallpox eradication effort in the state of Uttar Pradesh, a population of about one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty million people. My role was to assure that the program policies were being carried out, searches were being conducted, that the international staff and the Indian domestic staff that were working on the effort had the resources that they needed to carry out the function, to do spot assessments of the work at the primary health care centers and/or hospitals. Handle largely also to be the banker and make sure all the funds were flowing in the right direction. A very enjoyable experience and I met a lot of interesting people. Besides Uttar Pradesh my wife and I went to Bangladesh for a three to four week period of time to assist in one of the major searches and quite possibly look at an assignment in Bangladesh that they were - they need an administrator and I'm a public health advisor and not a physician. We decided that we're - we appreciated more the Indian aspects of that project and returned to Lucknow and carried out those functions for another, I'm guessing now - six to seven months and then we were reassigned into Delhi in the regional office in order to be the senior administrator for the program for its duration in India and participated with the international commission to declare India smallpox free. So, quite an interesting period of time for us and we really enjoyed the work. Melissa McSwegan: Describe a little bit your relationship with your - with the host country counterparts in India and Bangladesh? Dennis Olsen: On the first assignment, the three month assignment, we were working directly with the - I was assigned to a city in Bihar state or a town called Bhagalpur along the Ganges and our immediate relationship was with the health officer of that town. And the people who had gone before of which there were at least two others possibly three, had developed a strong working relationship so my fitting into that was just a simple as it possibly could be. There was absolutely not difficulty at all. We could work and do what it was that was required, got support to the extent that it was available from the locals and of course a lot of support from Cyro in Delhi. So it was a very easy experience that way. And all of the people, staff for the most part at the primary health care centers had been heavily involved with the effort to eradicate smallpox and participated to the extent that their abilities allowed. There were those times when we had to do a little extra encouragement in some areas and so forth but we still had very strong support of the local health officer and the Indian government from Delhi. Those people made periodic visits to assure that these relationships were maintained and overcame any of the infrequent difficulties that approached. When I became the WHO coordinator in Uttar Pradesh then I worked directly with the Minister of Health for that state and the staff at the other levels in order to carry out the functions. Again these things went very smoothly because of the overall direction of the Indian government from Delhi and the support that they provided to the program and those relationships never got in the way of carrying out the function. That is why I think the program was successful to a large degree. Melissa McSwegan: What would you say would have been the biggest challenge while you were there? Dennis Olsen: That's a hard question. There were - the challenges of first of all motivating the population to report rash like illness. So many other things were impacting on the population. Of course we instituted a reward system, a financial reward system to help with that. The difficulties of just getting around in the country. Not all areas had a road network been established. Quite often those that were established were interrupted for flow of water to farm. Quite often where we had to go roads had never been established so just getting to investigate an outbreak, getting to it was difficult. Getting supplies sometime the area were difficult. Heat, surviving in certain areas was difficult but all of those things could be overcome. It just took a little bit longer to do things than one might have hoped for. Melissa McSwegan: And what do you think - you've talked a little bit about the relationships that you've had and other things that helped it to be very successful but what do you think were the greatest successes that you had during that time? Dennis Olsen: Well the great success was that smallpox eradicated and I think that also a success to show that through a combined effort and the cooperation you could - excuse me - tackle a difficult situation and have some success from it and therefore the encouragement to continue with whatever effort you were in. Quite often we were approached out in the hinterland if you will about doing something for other sets of problems that existed in the country. Something to do with water, something to do with sanitation, to go beyond our scope of work in smallpox eradication to add some assistance or input into these levels. And of course we would report these sorts of requests back through the system but I think our experience and our being on site and the success of the program probably led, I think there is evidence that it did lead to attention being paid to these sorts of circumstances and problems as well and having them attacked when resources and political support were provided. Melissa McSwegan: How did your family adapt to living abroad both in Africa or in India? Dennis Olsen: Well, my wife were together. We don't have children. We're still married so. My wife Carolyn actually was quite involved in the Indian program. Some of the things that I would make recommendations to the central offices in Delhi with technical graphs and so forth that had to do with demonstrating how you could show your project was moving in a certain direction or had these successes or these failures, Carolyn being an engineer and having these kinds of talents put these together. So - and she went with me on the searches out into the field and through her own oral history she'll tell you some very interesting stories from her side but I probably would not have made the full two years if she hadn't have been there. Melissa McSwegan: So, what was it like living in India beyond the working environment, just living in India and participating in the culture? Dennis Olsen: Well, I can tell you from my - I had already been to Africa with that program and so when I thought, not thought but had been accepted to go to India the African situation would prepare me and it was largely true. But I do remember getting off the plane in New Delhi and the heat and the just large numbers of people and the immediate difference with - just an overwhelming humanity kind of thing, I thought what in the world have I gotten myself into. And we had a few days of training in Delhi then we were set out into the field to be with colleagues that had already been in the country two to three months to gain some experience. And I met a good friend Ras Charter in Bareilly who showed me how to get the jeep stuck as soon as you could but did demonstrate how work was done in the field. And then I went off to my assignment and met another CDC person waiting for me in Bhagalpur, Dr. David Hayman who had been there for a couple of months and he was kind of a light yellow. He had hepatitis so I thought well if he can put up with that I can put up with whatever is here. But I - Bhagalpur was a small place in comparison to the capital of Bihar, Patna. Patna was a small place compared to Delhi and I guess the point of this story is when I got back to Delhi after three months it looked like a large European city that I can definitely survive in. That's when - with that successful three months I asked Dr. Henderson - D. A. Henderson - and Dr. Bill Fergie if it would be possible to come back to India for a longer period. And after that longer period both my wife and I asked again if there was some way to stay with an active program be it immunization, diarrheal disease control, malaria, whatever it is that we might do to remain in India because we enjoyed the experience so much. We met a lot of interesting people. The Das family Lucknow. We lived above their residence. The people that we rented from in New Delhi, people in the field, it was just a pleasurable two years. Melissa McSwegan: Have you maintained any of your relationships with people you met in India probably? Dennis Olsen: You know thirty years have passed and I'm not sure how many people are - but the answer to that, short answer to that is not from the Indian side although I understand I will be seeing - we will be seeing a Dr. Dada who was a senior person in the Ministry of Health. He's in town and I look forward to renewing that relationship. We have shared with our CDC colleagues and others over the years when reliving these experiences, honing our lives and things like that. Melissa McSwegan: What would you say are your most memorable moments from working with the smallpox campaign? Dennis Olsen: Oh my goodness. One was going out to the very first smallpox investigation in Bhagalpur with Dr. Hayman. We had to walk through the rice paddies and wade through a river and my shoes were not appropriate. I lost the nails off both big toes, had full foot blisters underneath the - on my bottoms of my feet. Had to have tea and sugar and salts to get the electrolytes up and rode out on a donkey. It was - thanks to Dr. Hayman. Other experiences, I have to take some time to reflect. The international commission we happened to be there at the end of our assignment when they actually the commission came and announced that smallpox was eradicated from India. That was so satisfying to have spent the time and then to actually be there at a moment when history had been made. That will certainly be hard to - I will never forget it. And the others I think were just the individual relationships we made with people. The staff in Lucknow from the secretary to the very important and very good friend paramedical assistant Rujinder Singh. It's just things like that that stick with you and if it ever could happen again would not hesitate at all to do it again. Melissa McSwegan: And how would you say working with this campaign has affected your life and career since then? Dennis Olsen: Well I don't have a career anymore. I retired in nineteen ninety four. Affected our lives is that we're extremely proud that we had the opportunity to do it. I like to think that we did it well and enjoy the relationships that we still have with people that went over and did these sorts of things and days like today when we're back to remember what we all went through. It wasn't always easy. I don't ever want to let people think that it was just all good times and success. We lived in very harsh conditions a lot of the time and we put ourselves in jeopardy many times but just the pride of having done it, the pride of success and listening just this morning to what's happening with global programs. We like to think that maybe we were in a small way part of what allowed these things that now happening to move forward and hopefully enjoy some of the success that we had. We did the pioneer work they live to say. Melissa McSwegan: At what point during the program while you were working on it, at what point did you know that smallpox would be eradicated? Dennis Olsen: The day they announced it. Melissa McSwegan: So you weren't convinced until then? Dennis Olsen: Well you know you always wait for the next person to come forward and say we have a report of rash like illness. And you might have gone for six or seven months or a year and think you know this is pretty much it, we're sort of wrapping so it can happen. When I left Liberia in the African program we were sure for a whole year that we had not smallpox, quite successful and then someone came down from upcountry and said we have a woman and child in the hospital with rash like illness that looks like smallpox. So, when I - my wife and I were just ready to leave the country. Our assignment was over and my replacement had arrived so the same thing could have happened in India. As it turned out the African issue was monkey pox not smallpox but once they made the announcement in India we had assurances after many, many searches that there was no illness, no smallpox. Of course the search went on for anther couple of years to continue to assure that. It really didn't end at that point. It was the point where we said that we had reached that particular part of the goal but we had to confirm it again. Melissa McSwegan: What were the important lessons that you learned from smallpox eradication that you then applied to other parts of your career afterwards? Dennis Olsen: Well, the career after that was some domestic program work in childhood immunizations, then international work in HIV Aids and some work with international immunizations, diarrhea disease control and malaria control. For the international things what was learned was how to deal in an international setting. What things had to be attended to, to allow the program to have some success in the relationships that you needed to develop with the host country. How important it was to assure that you had the proper logistics before you tried, got the plan established and the logistics to carry it out and the resources to carry it out. And the important, very important tools of assessment. Continuing to look to see where you were along the road to trying to achieve your objective. Not just assuming you were doing okay but actively making sure from tools to asses your program activities and a personal relationship skills were honed I think. How to make sure that you were for example whatever credit might be accruing that you made sure it was the local that got the recognition. We knew we were doing okay, we didn't need to be told. So those kinds of things. I think those are always helpful. They are the more mundane things about improving your writing skills and these sorts of things but I think I touched on the more important. Melissa McSwegan: Now you have spoken a lot about the successes of the program. If you had been the one running the entire program worldwide is there anything that you would have done differently, that you would have changed about it? Dennis Olsen: No, I don't think so. How can you fight with success? You know I never ever thought of myself having those kind of capabilities. When you work for someone like D.A. Henderson, Bill Fergie, those are the people that have those visions and skills and at that level it's just a happy occasion that we got to be able to be a part of it. I can't think of anything I would change. Melissa McSwegan: Well do you have anything else that you would like to add about your experience? Dennis Olsen: No, I think we've pretty much covered the territory. Melissa McSwegan: All right. Well, thank you very you much for your time and I appreciate you sharing with us your experience in India. Dennis Olsen: Thank you very much for doing this. </pre> Player html for embedded player to stream video content <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vMgriQjaR74" 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 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:/25593/16rjx emory:16rjx Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 4643160000 bytes video/x-dv Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McSwegin, Melissa (Interviewer) Olsen, Dennis (Interviewee) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Centers for Disease Control Title A name given to the resource OLSEN, DENNIS Description An account of the resource Dennis Olsen describes his experiences as a CDC Operations Officer and Manager in the Smallpox Eradication Program in India 1972-1974. <br />Interviewed by Melissa McSwegin. Subject The topic of the resource Smallpox Eradication WHO Language A language of the resource English https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/f511eaf351fca33dd931d73b53f72ca3.jpg bc48be88f6f273f40238ff6efd93d765 https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/29a432a70495ed1beb0b629e39dad491.pdf 7d32ae7f525a12ef5444e0be9e3c968b 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: Carolyn Olsen Audio File Transcribed: January 22, 2009 Interviewer: This is an interview with Carolyn Olsen on July 11th two thousand and eight at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia about her role in the smallpox eradication campaign. The interviewer is Melissa McSwegan. 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 remember about events or people. The legal agreement you signed says that you are donating you're donating your 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. Interviewee: My name is Carolyn Hardy Olsen and I know I am being recorded. Interviewer: Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, so would you please briefly describe your childhood and you education and so on and what led you into work or participating in public health campaigns? Interviewee: I grew up in Wyoming and after doing all my schooling in Cheyenne Wyoming I went to the University of Wyoming where I graduated as civil engineer. And so I was working in Los Angeles when I met Dennis and shortly after we were married. We went to Africa and we enjoyed our three years in Liberia then we came back and again I worked as an engineer. And we were in Springfield Illinois when he went to (Bagapur) for three months and during that time I was working for the environmental protection agency and also getting my masters degree in environmental engineering. So, when he went to India I said I can't go right now I have to finish my masters degree. So, he sold the house out from under me and so I house sat that summer while I finished my degree but he knew I was coming to India cause I didn't have any place to live. And so I finished my masters degree and then I arrived in India and he met me in Delhi and it was pretty bad. And so after two days he put me on a train and we went off to Lucknow and he said, "I didn't decorate the apartment because I thought you could do it. And I sat there and all the wire was on the outside, the refrigerator was in the living room. It was really basic and I thought, "Oh my goodness." And so he said, "I've got to work now," and when he came back he said, "I've got to go the field tomorrow," and he wanted to go so we went off for a ten day field trip and when you go on a field trip you stay in very interesting places. Probably the best items that we took to India were our sleeping bags cause we were staying - they call them dock bungalows and they were usually about fifteen cents for a place to stay and breakfast and it wasn't worth it. Interviewer: Oh, right. Interviewee: They were really very basic and if we had water we would - if we had hot water we were very lucky but usually we had water. Then when we came back from that first trip Lucknow looked great then about a couple weeks later I used to have to fly or take the train into Delhi to get supplies. And like Dennis said it was like going to Europe. I mean Delhi looked first class after being in the field. Interviewer: Your perspective changed quite a bit during that time. Interviewee: Yes. Interviewer: How did you - you mentioned that you went on a - on field visits with your husband when he was working with the smallpox campaign. Did you play any particular role during these trips? Interviewee: Well, many of the villages were very rural and so I would usually walk along and because many times by having a woman with him the women were more comfortable but also I found that it's very interesting. Sometimes they have [inaudible 04.23] these different things in the village. I'll tell you one of the most interesting days though, in India women always have their legs covered and usually their arms. So I used to wear Levis and a kurta and I had very long blonde hair at that time and often wore it in a pigtail or pulled back. And on one occasion we came to this village way out in the middle of nowhere and I was reading a book that was really interesting so I said I'm not going into the village, I'll just stay here in the jeep. And so all the children come and they looked at me then they all ran away. And then all the ladies came and they got in a nice little line and usually people will go 'Namaste' but if you're very important it's 'Namaskar'. And the ladies were all giving me the 'Namaskar' and then they would chat away in Hindi. Well, the driver was just howling. I mean he was over by the - just holding his sides. The children had told the women that Indira Gandhi had come to the village so they were all telling me - and all the men were in the field because they were farmers and so probably in some village in India there is the [inaudible 05.41] of the day Indira Gandhi came to visit. But in general we would always go to the different health units and many times the Indian doctor was somebody who was either trained in Delhi or Bombay, now called Mumbai, and they were so glad to see somebody who spoke English. I mean they would get out their wedding pictures. These poor young ladies had arranged marriages and now they're in a village and they were used to living in a big city and so often times we had dinner with them. I mean it was a very - they were very hospitable and we just had a very interesting time in our field visits. Again we would go to many different health units during a day tracking down things and making sure their records were right. The sanitary facilities, again being an environmental engineer were not always that great and so you always had to watch your intake during the day. And so everybody wanted to give you tea and I didn't know at first how to say no and then I found out that, again it was Rujinder Singh our - Dennis' PMA who told me, "Tell them you're fasting." So I would say, "Oh thank you but I'm fasting today," and they would say, "Why?" And I say, "Oh I'm fasting for the health of my husband and the success of the smallpox program," and they would think I was just this wonderful person and then two health units further I would have a cup of tea again. But again you were in an environment that was very different than what most people especially during the hot months it was like a hundred and twenty degrees and you couldn't roll down the windows in the jeep because the wind coming through. And one day our driver took a shortcut so we got lost and we ended up stopping in a village where they went in, took the straw out and got us a piece of ice out of the ground which we put in a bucket and bought about twenty four Coca Cola. And we would get towels wet, put them on our head and it was just a interesting day, I mean very trying on us. Interviewer: And did you have the opportunity to apply your engineering and engineering training while you were living there? Interviewee: Not really. Again sometime there would be water questions and - but it really didn't lend itself to get involved. I was able to do that more when I was in Liberia. I taught sanitation workers how to do mapping and different things but again we were - actually we were moving quite a bit when we were in India. Interviewer: Describe a bit your relationship with the host country counterparts or the people you were interacting with on a day to day basis. How did that work? Interviewee: Being a woman in India is different. Our living arrangement was quite nice in that we lived upstairs in what they called (vasadi) of the Dases. And Mrs. Das was actually the president of the girls school next door, Isabel Thornbird College which is a prestigious college for Lucknow. And Mr. Das had been the police chief for the whole state and so we were included in that part. So there I felt very comfortable being a woman but when we were in the field it was - or when you were alone you always felt like, especially young boys between like fifteen and twenty three, they were very aggressive and so you would always like to make sure that you were - and as a result the PMA and the driver and everybody were always very protective of me. And being a professional person I was not used to having to have to kind of being protected. And then later on when we moved to Delhi it was a matter of having the taxi driver watch you while you went into the market. And it wasn't that you felt security, I mean it was just that they wanted to touch your hair or something. One time - oh, I had - I was having a strange pain and my fingers were starting to go numb and so I went to a doctor in Delhi and they said that I have Hobo's Disease. It was my arm from riding in the jeep I would have my arm up and it was pinching a nerve. And he says, "I think we should X-ray you." So I went in and the doctor came in and he started laughing because the paramedic had put my hair, my blonde hair so it was like a halo while I was laying there. But in general you just go with the flow of things. It was quite interesting. Interviewer: What were some of the biggest challenges to living in India? Interviewee: Food actually was kind of a challenge. We were - when we were in the field we were usually vegetarians because you didn't know the last time somebody who may have come through and eaten meat so you didn't know how old the meat that was in the restaurant. And we ate at the truck stops along the way and so we would always have to ask them to put the samosas back in or put new samosas into the hot oil so everything we ate was hot. The embassy doctor used to just be amazed because we would not get ill but we didn't eat fresh vegetables unless we were home and they were peeled even if we went to a very nice hotel or a nice buffet and we had a lot of soup and a lot of things but also we had a cook. He had a reputation. He had worked for Dr. Francis and Dr. McGinnis and everybody knew that Iddu was just a wonderful cook and so Iddu was an old man, I mean now he is probably forty but he seemed like an old man to us at that time. And he became ill and they gave him streptomycin which caused inner ear damage and so he was having a hard time walking and so then I would pay for a rickshaw to bring him right up to the door and then I had him bring his daughter who had had smallpox so it was really quite appropriate. She was blind in one eye and had pox - to help him so that he could his work. And one day - she would marketing, he would do the cooking most of the time. One day I am cooking, he is sitting there with his feet up, she is outside drinking tea and I'm thinking, "And I have servants," you know. But during that same period of time Iddu got more sick and so about every six weeks or so we would have this regional meeting and all of the epidemiologists would come in and the international epidemiologists would come for lunch and then the Indian and the international ones would all come for dinner which would be about a hundred people. So, we would have usually about twelve to fifteen for lunch and I had Sabra who would help but Iddu was gone so it was up to me. So I thought, "Well what," - so for lunch we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Kool-Aid for the international group and then for the other people I did manage to find some things that were almost ready made, you add two vegetables and you became, you know. And I thought okay this is adequate. Well, the next month as we're going around to the different epidemiologists to see how things were going and everything, all the international ones says, "Boy I hope you have the same lunch next time we're here. That was the best thing. I go to bed at night dreaming of that peanut butter and jelly sandwich." And then the Indian doctors, and Indian doctors actually had a harder time finding food because their wives had taken care of their food in their houses and rarely did they eat out. And in India you have to sort your rice and you know all those different things. Well, a couple of them asked for my recipe for the different curries I had made that night and I didn't have the heart to tell them that I had gone to the store and bought a box of something that I put in it. So I kept on like don't, [inaudible 15.21] the recipe you know, but I had an enjoyable time. It was a challenge and you never quite knew what the day was going to bring. Interviewer: Were you able at some point to decorate your apartment? You had mentioned your apartment had all the wires on the outside and did it eventually become more... Interviewee: Well, it actually started looking pretty good. Interviewer: Okay. Interviewee: I mean, we had fluorescent lights and definitely - but during - well, electricity was not always available and so sometimes you would have company or somebody and all of a sudden all the power would go out. And before the game Trivia Pursuit, we used to play a game that you would give the person the almanac and the flashlight and they would ask the other people questions. So that was our entertainment on that but when we were in the field sometimes if you didn't have power we would go to the movie because the Hindi movies are four hours long, they usually have fans or if they are upscale they have air conditioning and they have their own generators. So we used to go to a lot of Hindi movies when we were traveling and it was - like I said the heat was a challenge when you have a hundred and twenty degrees. Then the cold was a challenge because you had fifteen foot ceilings and no heat and so if you invited people over for dinner you would put the heater under the table and everybody would sit there in their coats and you would usually have soup or something hot. But other than that I mean it was probably the most grueling experience I have. I mean if you look at going to school, going to college, going to India is just straight up. I mean it's like they say you see the poorest, you see the richest. You are the hottest, you are the coldest. Everything is a dichotomy and the people there were just absolutely very hospitable and very, very nice. They were you know again I would say kind of shy but some of the doctors that we met especially the Indian doctors that were in charge of different areas were very, very nice. And this apartment that we had since they would come to visit us, they would see what we lived in so then they felt like they could invite us to their home so whenever we went to Delhi we would be invited to some of the doctors' houses. And probably one of the best invitations we ever had was Dr. Hakoli. While we were there they had the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad which happens I think every fifteen years and it's on the river banks of the River Ganges. And on a busy day there's about probably ten to fifteen million people come and we were invited to come and stay in one of the tents for a minor bathing day so there was only about five million people there. And so the Jumna, the Sangam and the Ganges all meet there and everybody goes to bathe and they have - they pray to the Sadhus. And the first night we arrived there was this chanting so I asked Mrs. Hakoli, I said, "Do they pray all night?" cause it sounds like the Hare Krishna chant. And she said, "Pray?" And I said yes and she said, "Oh! No they're listing hundreds of women who were lost today." And it was a tradition that when you went back to your village you stopped at lost and found to see if anybody from your village had come and gotten lost to take them back. And you would see these ladies with their saris tied together and some young son taking all their aunties to this festival. So it was very, very interesting. Interviewer: What were some of the biggest differences between India in Liberia in comparing your two experiences? Interviewee: Well, I worked in Liberia so I was working as a school teacher there and teaching math and in India I felt like my role was more to support my husband and then there were a lot of social functions like when the international group came again we hosted at our house. When we lived in Delhi and probably - well the type of people we met in India were very different even from the international side cause the Soviet Union was also - had provided quite a few epidemiologists and doctors for the program. And so we not only had Russians but we also had people from Chezkslovakia and a lot of Eastern European countries. And it was an education in social morays and also in how different countries looked at the Soviet Union and how when they socialized and when we socialized it was very different. Cause like if we were to go to a party it was put on by Dr. Codokevich or something as opposed to when we had a party we would look around and find out who else had a servant who would be the bartender and somebody else. So we had all Indian staff working the party. When we went to a Soviet party it was people from the embassy. I mean there were all kinds of ladies and other people that were Russian that were - you weren't uncomfortable but you knew it was very, very different. Interviewer: How did your time abroad particularly in India and Liberia with the smallpox program, how did that affect your career and your life afterwards? Interviewee: Well, on a I guess - India is such - I mean it's just there's so much energy and so much to do and so much to see that I just suddenly felt like I either had to write a book or do something and instead I started painting and in about six months I painted sixty some pictures all Indian. And in India you can do anything so I had a one woman show and sold my paintings and it was really, it was quite interesting. And one of the highlights was that Dr. Sensor actually purchased the first painting I ever painted which was of a train station and gave it to Dr. Fergie. And so my claim to fame was that one of my paintings was in the Carter Center for a while but on a professional side it really brought home the need for clean water. And my profession as it moved forward I was commissioner of water and pollution control for the city of Atlanta and I was very involved in a lot of water and waste water activities. I also then became the president of a non profit which is called Water for People and it gives you a real empathy for how important clean water and drinking water is because when we were in the field in order to have clean water we used to carry - the old milk buckets there are kind of made of aluminum and about this tall. And each night we would fill our jug up with water, put the immersion heater in, boil our water and put it in a - so we never had cold water but we had clean water. And with all the disease and the different things you just realize that water is probably one of the most important parts of our existence. Interviewer: Well, do you have any other stories or anecdotes that you would like to share with us? Any memorable moments from your time there? Interviewee: Oh, I must say that one of the - when we moved to Delhi I didn't get to go in the field anymore so I became a professional traveler and as a result anybody going anywhere I would go. And I was able to go up to an area close to the Nepali border which was called Tiger Haven where they would bring tiger - small tigers back from London and get them back into the wild. And they would put you up in a cage and let you watch the animals which was very interesting. Another time I went with some missionaries and we took a train ride on a no class train and it was a twenty four hour ride down to New Bombay and I was with some Swedish people and it was very, very interesting cause we used to travel by train but we used to travel at least first class something which wasn't that great. But this was - I think it cost me ten dollars to take a twenty four hour trip one return. And on one train we were in a car and the rest was freight and all of a sudden there was a band and it came through playing and it then got off the train. We come to find out they were on top and that's where - also that's where they would make tea and they would lean down over and sell you tea into the compartment but they riding up on top. And the last trip that I took that was very interesting was some people from the embassy were going to go from Delhi to Kabul, Afghanistan. So we went through Pakistan and through the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan. And that was all in the seventies so that was before the Russians came and I just feel very sad when I see what has happened to Afghanistan. I don't know if you've read it or not but Kite Runner when it described at the beginning is the kind of Afghanistan that I had seen and I also had empathy for Afghanistan cause when I went to University of Wyoming, University of Afghanistan, University of Wyoming were sister colleges so I had met Afghans then also. But other than being a world traveler I think that was pretty much a very positive experience and again I'm sure it changed my life. I mean it just gave me a whole different way of looking at the world and from a South East Asian standpoint but also with all the different cultures that we met through the program. Interviewer: Well, thank you for sharing your story. Interviewee: Okay. </pre> Player html for embedded player to stream video content <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vfecYsSMtAs" 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 2008-07-12 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/16rc7 emory:16rc7 Subject The topic of the resource CDC Smallpox Smallpox India Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 5847600000 bytes video/x-dv Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Olsen, Carolyn (Interviewee) McSwegin, Melissa (Author) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Centers for Disease Control Title A name given to the resource OLSEN, CAROLYN Description An account of the resource Carolyn Olsen, wife of Operations Officer Dennis Olsen, discusses life in India and in Liberia, during the Smallpox Eradication Program. Language A language of the resource English https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/9e73adb0276dae8e3e81b079dded3264.jpg a6b7596f97213fa0478af4a827dbca76 https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/593067580a4e333a354d709d49ccd453.pdf c49df0c586f37185344bfce41561d04a 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: Stan Music Audio File Transcribed: January 29, 2009 Interviewer: This is an interview with Stan Music on July 11th, 2008 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia about his role in the smallpox eradication campaign. The interviewer is Melissa McSwegan. 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 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. So for the record could you please state your full name and that you know you are being recorded. Interviewee: My name is Stanley Music and I know that I'm being recorded. Interviewer: Thank you. To start out with can you talk a bit about how your education and upbringing led you to work in the health field? Interviewee: Yeah. My father was an immigrant although he came to this country at a very early age. He was the oldest of five or six children and when his father died he was still a teenager and he had to quickly abandon any of his hopes at a higher education and start earning a living for his family. As a result of that he always encouraged both his sons -- me and my brother -- to become a professional man whatever that meant to him but he wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or something professional and not have the financial worries that he had pretty much all of his life. Interviewer: And so then once you did - begun working in health how did you get involved with the smallpox campaign? Interviewee: Well I went to - I got accepted to two medical schools one of which was in the same city in which I lived and the other was an hour away and would require that I be in residence away from home which opportunity I jumped at because I had been to college in the same city in which I lived. So I went to University of Maryland, medical school and fell under the influence of professor of medicine Ted Woodward who was quite well known in international infectious disease circles. Because I fit his profile of whatever he was looking for, during my junior year summer between third year and fourth year of medical school he sent me as a research assistant to Pakistan. And I saw an incredible variety of infectious diseases, human rabies, smallpox, cholera and a few others that made a deep and lasting impression on me and probably set my values for somebody who wanted to help make a difference in diseases of poverty in tropical areas and generally trying to bring the benefits of twentieth century medicine to a population that was living in hundreds of earlier times in effect. Interviewer: So, when you first began working with the smallpox campaign what was your role? Interviewee: Oh. We have skipped an awful lot of history then. So I was very much interested in infectious disease, internal medicine and actually specialized in infectious disease but couldn't quite see myself as an academic fighting for grants etcetera. So I followed a friend of mine, Mike Greg down to CDC and paid him a visit where he was part of the EIS program and editing the MMWR and got very interested in a career in the public health service in epidemiology. And the following year I applied to the EIS - excuse me - and was accepted and because of my Pakistan experience when I was an EIS officer and Pakistan and - West Pakistan and East Pakistan had a falling out and East Pakistan wanted to become an independent country called Bangladesh. I was part of the team that was sent by CDC to work in Bangladesh on a nutrition survey designed to make sure that the food that was in the country was given on a priority basis to the areas that needed it the most. That experience in turn led me to learn Bengali and that's why Stan Foster was very interested in recruiting me to the Bangladesh program because I had been to the country before and I spoke enough of the language to get around on my own. So that kind of set the stage for my smallpox involvement. I protested mightily when he asked me to join because I had just acquired admission and a full federal scholarship to University of London to get an MPH equivalent degree. But he agreed that if I gave him two years of smallpox eradication that he would see to it that I continued on in my academic studies before joining CDC permanently as a staff member and he was good to his word as was I. Interviewer: So tell me a little bit about the working relationships you had with your counterparts on the ground and what were the successes and failures you had with that. Interviewee: Well, counterpart was I think in many ways an exaggeration because they really had no clue as to what was expected and what was going to be done. We ended up actually setting up a whole parallel system of employment. We used Ministry of Health personnel to be sure but by giving them - by basically doubling their salaries and giving them access to motorbikes and Land Rovers and other transportation we elevated their status and they became very loyal to us. They became reliable surveillance partners who could go out on a schedule and be in a village market on a given day at a given time and advertise about the smallpox program and get information about whether there was any smallpox showing pictures of kids with smallpox and asking if they knew of anyone. But we set up a whole parallel system. The government of Bangladesh was very good at acquiescing to our stated and carefully thought out -- most of the times -- needs but they really weren't partners in the delivery of the services. They just stood aside and let us do our things mostly. Interviewer: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced on the work on the ground? Interviewee: Well, one of the biggest challenges was getting people to do what they were supposed to do. They weren't used to being inspected. They weren't used to being challenged, they weren't used to having somebody count the number of vaccines vials and then three weeks later come back and ask how many people had been vaccinated and then go back and count the vaccine vials again and see if things actually jived. I learnt very early that the Bengali intellect is quite well formed and they know for example that there are exceptions to every rule. So when I said you know if you find a smallpox case the whole village is quarantined and you vaccinate everyone, but if I then did an inspection when they said everyone had been vaccinated, they would - I would discover a guy dying of TB or congestive heart failure or something lying off in a corner of a hut, and he had been exempted from vaccination. But I said there are no exemptions and they said every rule has exemptions and I said okay, thought about for a while and then I said, "Okay. We are now going to vaccinate everybody with one exception. We will vaccinate no dead persons." And they laughed but they understood and then I had no problems. So it was a matter of understanding the culture, understanding their attitudes and the challenge then of translating my desires into something that they could follow and give me results that I was looking for. Another big challenge was these seasonal fairs that pulled people in from many, many miles away. They were a source of revenue to the district commissioners who got a piece of the commercial action but when I found that a particular fair was actually a disseminating source of smallpox because people who were infectious were coming, mingling with people who were still susceptible who then spread out and returned to their villages, I had a big problem. And I had to - people who were earning the money threatened me because I was going to report this. In the end I went to Dhaka and informed my superiors about it but basically got no support until D.A. arrived from Geneva, listened to my tale of woe and did his little magic with the political heads of the health department and WHO and then we managed to put vaccinators into the fair areas and stop the transmission. So there were challenges all the time. Another challenge we had was a lack of petrol in the area that I was designed to cover. So we had Land Rovers and we had jeeps and we had motorbikes but we couldn't run them because we didn't have any fuel and there was no way to get any fuel. But we ended up doing something quite inspired, quite illegal and quite dangerous. We found a train siding run by the army with cars full of petrol. We ended up one night unpinning the connection to the last car, rolling it a couple of miles down the track and siphoning out all the gasoline and finding ways to store it and returning the car under the cover of darkness back to the train as if nothing had happened only it was now largely empty instead of being full. But we needed the petrol to make our surveillance rounds and to keep pressure on this disease to stop it from spreading. So, yes there were challenges every day of many, many kinds. Interviewer: Tell me a little bit more about life in Bangladesh from a cultural perspective. Not so much just about the work but what was it like living in Bangladesh? Interviewee: Ha. It meant when the sun went down the lights went out. It meant learning to be patient, it meant learning to enjoy the simple things like a home cooked meal. There were a mixture of Muslims and Hindus and a few Christians and a few non believers of every variety. There were some people of the old ruling class under the days of the Maharaja who still lived in crumbling palaces but it was a wonderful education and at night there was nothing to do but talk. There was no radio or television or anything although I did have a little portable shortwave but the culture was rich, the people were wonderfully talkative. The oral traditions were great and I learnt a lot about the people and their culture, their habits, their food, their clothing, their rituals and the way that they accepted life. And although they had by my standards a very primitive existence, they actually enjoyed their lives I thought to a much greater extent even with all the poverty and the disease and the premature mortality and the excess morbidity to a greater extent and with more relish than I could recall from the United States. Interviewer: As you were working with the smallpox campaign, was there a particular point where you knew that smallpox could be eradicated and would be eradicated? Interviewee: Well, actually no. I had the belief that it could be because I understood the epidemiology and nothing in my experience had given any reason to believe that my understanding was different than reality but every day in Bangladesh ten thousand - that was the birth rate - ten thousand new susceptible would be born. So even if as in my dreams we could fly B-52 bombers wing tip to wing tip over the country spraying vaccine so that everybody who took a breath would be vaccinated, the very next day we would have ten thousand new susceptible. And I knew that just vaccinating, trying to vaccinate and keep a population fully vaccinated wasn't going to work. What we needed was an epidemiologically oriented program that Bill Fergie designed and clearly when we were working efficiently with good surveillance and good follow up, good containment, good ring vaccination, good quarantine, we stopped the spread cold and it worked every time. So I knew that once we had it all together it was going to happen very quickly and it did. Interviewer: Now that you have thirty some years of perspective on this campaign is there anything you would have done differently? Interviewee: No, I don't think there was actually. I think it was a treasure of an experience, it shaped my life and my career and my attitudes, my values. I thought that smallpox was just the beginning, that we would then march on to measles and all the other vaccine preventable diseases. After all we had the surveillance organized, we had the trained staff, we had people in place, all we had to do was implement it but that was not going to be. But my generation of CDC epidemiologists were always somehow more empowered and more aggressively public health oriented than our colleagues who didn't have this experience. Interviewer: What are the most important lessons that you learned from smallpox that you then applied to other areas of your career after the campaign finished? Interviewee: Well, to a certain degree smallpox was about breaking the rules or interpreting the rules with flexibility bordering on breaking the rules because nobody sitting back at a desk could figure out what was really going on in the field. If you went to the field you learned about the fairs that were spreading smallpox, you learned about the people not being vaccinated because they had some other illness and etcetera. So smallpox taught me to break the rules if I was going to be successful, if I was going to be carrying out the disease reduction, following through on the results of an investigation. But you can't operate that way in the civilized world and in modern European or in America. So I had to change the way that Bangladesh had taught me and learn how to be patient, learn how to educate, learn how to involve the public and not be the kind of imperialistic dictator that solved the smallpox problem but was not going to cut the mustard in the real world after that. Interviewer: And how did the overall experience impact your life? Interviewee: Well it made me a public health believer because I had a monster success under my belt. They gave me a quarter of Bangladesh, twenty five million people then, five districts, a suitcase full of money and some vaccine and some bifurcated needles and said go do it. And I had a driver and we did it. It was amazing and it filled me with a desire to have a full public health career and to carry out those initial dreams that I had when I was but a medical student wanting to bring those people up to the twentieth century in terms of their morbidity, mortality and infant child mortality experience. Interviewer: Did you continue working in infectious diseases? Interviewee: Well I continued working in epidemiology but I came back to CDC and worked with Lyle Conrad in supervising EIS officers that were assigned to state and local health departments. I kept my hand in international consultation and did a few WHO and USAID consultancies. I used the time to understand a lot about other countries and eventually was recruited to the global EIS by Phil Brockman and then when he retired I was named his successor and I put programs in Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Philippines, Peru, Italy and Australia. And said no to a couple of very big countries to the disappointment of my boss because those countries weren't ready and they weren't going to participate but that was India and Egypt which have since changed and there are now cooperative programs with those countries. But I used that, that was - that helped define me. Interviewer: Can you tell us one - one of the most memorable moments you have of your time in Bangladesh? Something that happened, an event that happened, something that you remember and think back on. Interviewee: Yeah, I think I can. I don't think that there are very many people who know this story. There was a famine in Bangladesh at that time, at least in my area. There was a - they had two or three rice crops a year depending on how much water there was and the physical geography of individual areas. And a rice crop had failed so there was quite a bit of [inaudible 24.14] starvation and it was getting hard to hire people because the wages that we were authorized to pay wouldn't give them enough money to buy the food that they needed so we weren't really competitive. And then the new rice crop which was not failing was about to come in and here they got a living wage plus they could put handfuls of rice in their pants pockets and they could earn a lot more, in essence take home take a lot more than they could working for me. And working for me meant being guards, vaccinating around infected villages. Well I couldn't live with the idea that we could identify villages and then not protect them and not vaccinating those villages and not break the chain of transmission. And I sat down with one of my subordinates an Egyptian physician, Ali Salim [inaudible 25.32], wonderful man, and we sat up at night and thought about our dilemma and how we were going to resolve it. We had radioed back to Dhaka and they told us the price that we pay for each guard was fixed. I don't remember how much it was, fifteen taka a day or something like that but we couldn't pay anymore and we needed to pay more. And I said, "Look you're leaving me in an awkward position. I've got infected villages. I can't quarantine them, I can't vaccinate any of them. I don't have enough people." "Those are the rules." Okay. So Ali and I sat down and decided we were going to invent villages and were going to invent outbreaks, and we were going to invent workers and we did and we paid them the right wage on paper. And we encumbered then a lot of need for money which we then divided up among the real workers and paid them enough to keep them working for us and not harvesting the rice. So yes, I can tell you that and probably other stories as well about what we had to do to stop smallpox. Interviewer: Wow. Interviewee: Yes. Interviewer: Well, is there anything else that you would like to add or any other stories that you think? Interviewee: I think I've probably gotten myself in enough hot water you know. Interviewer: Like do you really want that story [inaudible 27.18]? No. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your time in sharing your experience with us. It all looks very interesting so thank you. Interviewee: Okay. </pre> Player html for embedded player to stream video content <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-tJBUIy58qc" 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/. 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:/25593/16rzk emory:16rzk Subject The topic of the resource Bangladesh Smallpox Eradication Smallpox Eradication Smallpox Eradication Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 5947080000 bytes video/x-dv Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McSwegin, Melissa (Interviewer) Music, Stanley (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 MUSIC, STANLEY Description An account of the resource Dr. Stanley Music describes his experiences as an epidemiologist in Bangladesh with the Smallpox Eradication Program from 1973-1975. Language A language of the resource English https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/bb4d77f5c5cb858938086a47659535bf.pdf 07883a0c45429e8e69a87b5795d90fc3 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> Documents Government Records 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/. 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Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 12th, 1969 CDC Measles Smallpox Eradication USAID WHO https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/b728fb0c762acd4f3292c2eca0696688.pdf 664ba29ed76448d3364ebd43825a7c24 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> Documents Government Records 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 government records text Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 12th, 1969 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/15j6v emory:15j6v Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf 3573443 bytes Subject The topic of the resource CDC Smallpox Eradication USAID WHO Measles Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Millar, Don (Author); CDC Title A name given to the resource DATA – Measles Control in Africa Description An account of the resource Data tables and charts from “Measles Control in Africa, A Practical and Theoretical Epidemiological Challenge,” a paper presenting the epidemiological features of West African measles and describing theoretical studies of, and practical attempts to achieve, measles control. Presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 12th, 1969. By Don Millar, Communicable Disease Center. Language A language of the resource English CDC Measles Smallpox Eradication USAID WHO https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/7fd81924c30964a787e6bed8b66617b0.JPG 5a7783457976dbf3b091279eb1959fc2 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> Media Powerpoints, Recorded lectures, movies, training films, and interviews Player html for embedded player to stream video content <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ftzb1NrfjWo" 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/. 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His talk gives a broad look at the history of the program, its management and accomplishments. Introduced by Dr. Stanley Foster. Language A language of the resource English https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/73d26e69a6d16b68cc541a79b3af795c.pdf f6b8fe73dd917ad24c7b306976b5ab08 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> Documents Government Records 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 government records Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968-01-22 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context emory:1dps3 http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/1dps3 Subject The topic of the resource Celebration of 10 million vaccinations Smallpox Eradication CDC USAID Fetishes Sonponna History of smallpox in Nigeria Talking drum Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 66665 bytes application/pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Millar, Donald (Author); CDC; Director, SEP Title A name given to the resource MEMORANDUM – February 23, 1968 Description An account of the resource Memorandum TO: Director of the National Communicable Disease Center FROM: Chief of the Smallpox Eradication Program REGARDING: The address given by the Timi of Ede (The Royal Highness of the province of Ede, Nigeria) on the occasion of a celebration commemorating the 10 millionth person vaccinated in Nigeria. Language A language of the resource English CDC Celebration of 10 million vaccinations Fetishes History of smallpox in Nigeria Smallpox Eradication Sonponna Talking drum USAID https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/f1c8a332835a99551c700cdb624dec22.pdf 06d2ffd7d6cd25203104b7a713aab6ee 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. 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Type The nature or genre of the resource government records text Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/83qgk emory:83qgk Subject The topic of the resource CDC Somalia smallpox MOH Somalia WHO Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1657445 bytes application/pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Miller, Rick (Author); CDC; Public Health Advisor Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Centers for Disease Control Title A name given to the resource NOTES – Somalia 1977 Description An account of the resource A set of handwritten notes by Rick Miller, Public Health Advisor covering the author’s activities and challenges in Somalia for a 9-month period at the end of the eradication program. Language A language of the resource English CDC MOH Somalia Somalia Smallpox WHO https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/1b69668fd433228d7257c8f5d9a17d22.jpg 4f42519dab2c70d3d3646f95bd737664 https://www.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://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/9ffb2b569070d7763de4414b2f965725.pdf 9410bff487119fd476e15d94189c25c9 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> Documents Government Records 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 government records text Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 1st, 1966 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/15ht7 emory:15ht7 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf 3121744 bytes Subject The topic of the resource USAID Smallpox Eradication CDC WHO Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Morris, Leo (Author); CDC Title A name given to the resource SMALLPOX SURVEILLANCE REPORT – No. 1 Description An account of the resource “West Africa Smallpox/Measles Control Program: Surveillance Report No. 1,” a periodic report prepared by Leo Morris, Assistant Chief of the Smallpox Eradication/Measles Control Program. Produced by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, U.S. Public Health Service, Communicable Disease Center. Language A language of the resource English CDC Smallpox Eradication USAID WHO https://www.globalhealthchronicles.org/files/original/4817bbc47459e55e0a3e708c48479b57.pdf 4baa36b4fdbc838791fdedf919fd01e7 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> Documents Government Records 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 ARTICLE – Memories and Milestones Subject The topic of the resource Ali Maow Maalin Description An account of the resource “Smallpox Eradication: Memories and Milestones,” Kathy Nellis, an article from the CDC Connects website regarding the eradication of Smallpox, highlighting the last case in Somalia with Ali Maow Maalin. Includes interviews of Mike Lane, William Foege, Jason Weisfeld, Donald Millar, and D.A. Henderson. Produced by the Communicable Disease Center. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nellis, Kathy (Author); CDC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 26th, 2007 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Centers for Disease Control Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1085274 bytes application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource government records text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context emory:1dpk8 http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/1dpk8