Smallpox eradication champion William Foege dies at age 89

Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at 89

By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron

William Foege, a leader in the global fight against smallpox, has died. Foege died Saturday at the age of 89, according to the Task Force for Global Health, a public health organization he co-founded.

Foege led the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s smallpox eradication program in the 1970s. Before the disease was officially eradicated in 1980, it killed about one in three infected people. According to the CDC, there have been no new cases of smallpox since 1977.

“If you look at the simple measure of who saved the most lives, he’s at the top of the pantheon,” former CDC Director Tom Frieden told the Associated Press. “The eradication of smallpox prevented hundreds of millions of deaths. »

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Foege later headed the CDC and served as senior medical advisor and principal investigator at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Foege was a strong advocate of vaccines for public health, writing with epidemiologist Larry Brilliant in Scientific American in 2013, that efforts to eliminate polio “have never been closer” to success. “By working together,” they wrote, “we will soon relegate polio – alongside smallpox – to the history books.” » Polio remains a “candidate for eradication,” according to the World Health Assembly.

And in 2025, Foege, alongside several other former CDC directors, spoke out against the policies of current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. New York Times In an opinion piece, they wrote that the top health official’s mandate was “unlike anything we’ve ever seen at the agency.”

In a statement, Patrick O’Carroll, CEO of the Global Health Task Force, recalled Foege as an “inspiring” figure, both for early-career public health workers and veterans in the field. “Every time he spoke, his vision and compassion reawakened the optimism that led us to choose this field and reinvigorated our efforts to make this world a better place,” O’Carroll said.

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