1972 outbreak of smallpox in Yugoslavia

The 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak was the last major outbreak of smallpox in Europe. It was centred in Kosovo and Belgrade (both then part of the Socialist Republic of Serbia). A Muslim pilgrim had contracted the smallpox virus in the Middle East. Upon returning to his home in Kosovo, he started the epidemic in which 175 people were infected, 35 of whom died. The epidemic was efficiently contained by enforced quarantine and mass vaccination. The 1982 film Variola Vera is based on the event.

By 1972, vaccination for smallpox had long been widely available and the disease was considered to be eradicated in Europe. The population of Yugoslavia had been regularly vaccinated against smallpox for 50 years, and the last case was reported in 1930. This was the major cause for the initial slow reaction by doctors, who did not promptly recognize the symptoms of the disease.

In October 1970, an Afghan family went on pilgrimage from Afghanistan, where smallpox was endemic, to Mashhad in Iran, triggering a massive epidemic of smallpox in Iran that would last until September 1972. By late 1971, smallpox-infected devotees on pilgrimage had carried the smallpox from Iran into Syria and Iraq.

In early 1972, a 38-year-old Kosovo Albanian Muslim clergyman named Ibrahim Hoti, from Damnjane near Đakovica, Kosovo, Serbia, undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca. He also visited holy sites in Iraq, where there were known cases of smallpox. He returned home on February 15. The following morning he felt achy and tired, but attributed this to the long bus journey. Hoti soon realised that he had some kind of infection, but, after feeling feverish for a couple of days and developing a rash, he recovered - probably because he had been vaccinated two months earlier.

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