The 2003 United States smallpox vaccination campaign was a vaccination program announced by the White House on 13 December 2002 as preparedness for bioterrorism using smallpox virus. The campaign aimed to provide the smallpox vaccine to those who...
The smallpox vaccine is used to prevent smallpox infection caused by the variola virus. It is the first vaccine to have been developed against a contagious disease. In 1796, British physician Edward Jenner demonstrated that an infection with the...
Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop immunity from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating the...
Mass vaccination is a public policy effort to vaccinate a large number of people, possibly the entire population of the world or of a country or region, within a short period of time. This policy may be directed during a pandemic, when there is a...
The history of smallpox extends into pre-history. Genetic evidence suggests that the smallpox virus emerged 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. Prior to that, similar ancestral viruses circulated, but possibly only in other mammals, and possibly with...
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by the variola virus, which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization certified the global eradication of the...
Between 1836 and 1840, smallpox became widespread across the Great Plains. The epidemic reached its height following the spring of 1837, when an American Fur Company steamboat, the SS St. Peter's, carried infected people and supplies up the Missouri...
A vaccination policy is a health policy adopted in order to prevent the spread of infectious disease. These policies are generally put into place by state or local governments, but may also be set by private facilities, such as workplaces or...
Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. The Court's decision articulated the view that individual liberty is not...
The history of smallpox in Mexico spans approximately 430 years, from the Spanish invasion and colonization of Central America until its official eradication under the Republic of Mexico in 1951. It was brought to what is now Mexico by the Spanish...
