Two infectious diseases have been successfully wiped out: Smallpox and Rinderpest.

Two infectious diseases have been successfully wiped out: Smallpox and Rinderpest.

Two infectious diseases have successfully been eradicated: smallpox and rinderpest. There are also four ongoing programs, targeting poliomyelitis, yaws, dracunculiasis, and malaria.

To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared only 2 diseases officially eradicated: smallpox caused by variola virus (VARV) and rinderpest caused by the rinderpest virus (RPV).

The eradication of smallpox is therefore a major success story for global health for several reasons: it was a disease that was endemic – and caused high mortality rates – across all continents; but was also crucial to advances in the field of immunology as the smallpox vaccine was the first successful vaccine to ever