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Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. [7] [11] The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980, [10] making smallpox the only human disease to have been eradicated to date.
Smallpox was a dangerous disease caused by the variola major virus. The most common type of smallpox, ordinary, historically has devastated populations with a 30% death rate. The smallpox virus is transmittable through bodily fluids and materials contaminated with infected materials.
Over the summer of 1862 various ships reported high death tolls. The disease reduced the KwakwakaŹ¼wakw population by over 50%. Likewise there were harrowing reports about the Heiltsuk people of the Bella Bella area. On 18 July 1862 the Daily British Colonist reported that smallpox had killed about 60% of the Heiltsuk people. Robert Boyd ...
The symptoms of smallpox are rash on the skin and blisters filled with raised liquid. [ citation needed ] The disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans annually during the 19th century and one-third of all the blindness of that time was caused by smallpox. 20 to 60% of all the people that were infected died and 80% of all the children with ...
The first known smallpox epidemic to strike the native peoples of the coastal and interior Pacific Northwest arrived in the early 1770s, devastating large swathes of the population and causing significant demographic collapse – both from the disease itself and corresponding malnutrition from the deaths of hunters within tribes.
The blisters often begin as faint flat spots, before progressing into raised bumps and fluid-filled scabs. Other symptoms of the disease included headache, backache, extreme abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting. The Natives were able to deduce that the disease could be contracted through close contact with an infected individual.
Mpox, which comes from the same virus family as smallpox, spreads from animals to people, and it received its former name, monkeypox, because that is the animal it was first discovered in.
There have been various major infectious diseases with high prevalence worldwide, but they are currently not listed in the above table as epidemics/pandemics due to the lack of definite data, such as time span and death toll. An Ethiopian child with malaria, a disease with an annual death rate of 619,000 as of 2021. [18]