The American epidemiologist who led the successful international effort to eradicate smallpox has died. Dr. Donald “D.A.” Henderson was 87.
Johns Hopkins University said in a statement that Henderson died Friday at a hospice facility in Towson, Maryland, from complications following a hip fracture.
Henderson was a former dean of the school’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.
In the university’s statement, current Dean Micheal Klag calls Henderson “a giant in public health.”
The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was diagnosed in Somalia in 1977. The World Health Assembly declared the deadly disease eradicated in 1980.
Henderson was director of the World Health Organization’s smallpox eradication campaign from 1966 to 1977. He told a Johns Hopkins publication last year that he was proud to have been part of the campaign.
