The nine-year-old Pakistani girl who came down with fever soon after she reached Bradford, northern England's wool capital, seemed to have malaria. After she died. Pathologist Norman Ainley did an autopsy to make sure. He was unprepared for the real cause of death: smallpox. In quick succession, the Bradford area produced eleven more smallpox cases among newly arrived Pakistanis and their contacts. Among them was Pathologist Ainley. He became the first patient to receive a new, experimental anti-smallpox drug—so new that doctors could not be sure how much to give him. But Dr. Ainley. 37, father of two, had been massively exposed to the virus. Last week he died.
Britain: Lax. Why should a doctor—as well as six other persons—die of smallpox in the country that for more than 160 years has known the techniques of vaccination devised by Englishman Edward Jenner? The answer is that Britain has let down its legal guard against smallpox. In 1948 the country's compulsory vaccination law, attacked as infringing an Englishman's freedom and as being unnecessary as well, was repealed. But Britain's immunity had depended mainly on the duration of a steamship passage from India (heart of the world's greatest smallpox reservoir), a period longer than the eight-to-14 incubation period of smallpox. Air travel ended that. Then Britain began to encourage immigration from Pakistan. Since then. Britain has had smallpox outbreaks every few years, with a score of deaths.
Last November smallpox erupted with more than usual violence in Karachi. It has killed at least 267 people and made many more sick. But not until five infected Pakistanis had flown the disease to England did Pakistani Health Minister, General Wajid Ali Burki, crack down on Karachi's sloppy vaccination and isolation practices. While Britons rushed for emergency vaccinations, health inspectors carted off newly-arrived Pakistanis' clothing for disinfection. Authorities in London sputtered that all the infected Pakistanis had "valid" vaccination certificates when they entered. But a Pakistani admitted that in his country these can easily be bought. The British are now requiring visitors to show vaccination scars or go to an isolation hospital. But the British government still shies away from reinstating compulsory vaccination.
The U.S.: Tough. Though the U.S. has no national compulsory vaccination, it has had no confirmed cases of smallpox since 1953. And authorities have been consistently tougher than Britain's about exacting from travelers proof of vaccination within the last three years. Now travelers from epidemic areas or those who might have been in contact with such travelers are closely watched. The Public Health Service urges all Americans having such contacts, or now going abroad, to get revaccinated if their last vaccination is more than a year old.