A Canada-Brazil Network in the Global Eradication of Smallpox

Abstract

th anniversary of the global eradication of smallpox, the only public health effort in history to eradicate a disease from the human species. The Smallpox Eradication Program (SEP) of the World Health Organization (WHO) was an assemblage of state, bilateral and multilateral agencies and resources, deftly brought together and coordinated by Donald A. Henderson, SEP director from 1966 to 1977. Less visible but equally crucial to the success of the SEP, especially at the level of vaccine research and production, were informal networks of public health scientists. These “epistemic communities” were made up of knowledgebased experts with authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within their field of expertise. 1 Circulating among and transecting different levels of international cooperation, their members shared similar academic backgrounds and scientific values, frequented the same seminars and specialist committee meetings, and understood the challenges involved in the production of vaccines. Often rooted in well-established research and production facilities, these networks could operate without official nation-state sanction or involvement by working through organizations with authority in international health like WHO and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO). One such epistemic community linked Canada’s Connaught Laboratories to the SEP and to Latin American – and particularly Brazilian – vaccine production. Its principal members were Henderson, Jose Fonseca da Cunha (1914-2005), who was responsible for vaccine and serum production at Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Institute, and Connaught scientists Robert J. Wilson (1915-1989) and Paul Fenje. Officially, Canada played only an indirect part in the SEP through its role as a WHO member state, and at the outset of the global eradication initiative had no bilateral ventures of any kind in Latin America. The Canada-Brazil network linking Henderson, Wilson, Fenje, Fonseca da Cunha and others, however, allowed Connaught and Canadian scientists to become significant players in the global eradication effort 2 while simultaneously pressing the Canadian government to be less of a “reluctant partner” in health cooperation in the hemisphere. 3