Mission : Save the Environment by Sean B. Carroll - Project Syndicate
▻https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/smallpox-eradication-global-cooperation-by-sean-b--carroll-2016-0
(le passage qui suit concerne l’éradication de la #variole)
The key to this tremendous medical achievement was not, as one might expect, some major health breakthrough (the smallpox vaccine had been around since the eighteenth century). It was diplomacy, flexibility, and #cooperation.
[...]
Henderson recognized that the Soviet Union – which had been pressing for an eradication campaign for several years, and had already pledged to donate 25 million doses of vaccine annually – would not be enthusiastic about an American leading the charge. So he reached out to the Soviet deputy health minister, Dimitri Venediktov, with whom he established a rapport that enabled the two sides to work together on strategy and logistics, in addition to their vaccine donations (the US had agreed to provide 50 million doses each year). The two most unlikely allies ended up leading the fight together.