Ali Maow Maalin

Ali Maow Maalin
Ali Maow Maalin in 1977, while infected with smallpox.
Born	1954 Merca, Somalia
Died	July 22, 2013 (2013-07-23) (aged 59) Merca, Somalia
Nationality	Somali
Occupation	Smallpox survivor, vaccine advocate
Known for	Last person in history recorded to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox

Ali Maow Maalin (also Mao Moallim and Mao' Mo'allim) (1954 – 22 July 2013) was a Somali hospital cook and health worker from Merca who is the last person known to be infected with naturally occurring Variola minor smallpox in the world. He was diagnosed with the disease in October 1977 and made a full recovery. Although he had many contacts, none of them developed the disease and an aggressive containment campaign was successful in preventing an outbreak. Smallpox was declared to have been eradicated globally by the World Health Organization (WHO) two years later. Maalin was subsequently involved in the successful poliomyelitis eradication campaign in Somalia, and he died of malaria while carrying out polio vaccinations after the reintroduction of the virus in 2013.

Smallpox is an infectious disease caused by two strains of virus, Variola major and V. minor. V. minor is the rarer of the two strains, and causes a much less severe disease (sometimes called alastrim), with a fatality rate of around 1%. No treatment is available, and the only protection is vaccination. The virus is usually transmitted by prolonged face-to-face contact with a person showing symptoms. The incubation period averages 12–14 days. One of the most feared diseases of human history, smallpox was still causing an estimated 2 million deaths every year as late as 1967.

The global effort to eradicate smallpox from endemic areas such as Africa began in 1959 with a mass vaccination campaign. This approach met with little success, and a more-effective targeted approach was developed in the late 1960s. This involved active surveillance by case hunting, combined with rapid containment of infection in areas reporting outbreaks by intensive vaccination. The majority of African countries were free from smallpox by 1972. By the end of 1975, the virus had been eradicated worldwide except in Ethiopia and Somalia in the Horn of Africa, and their neighbour Kenya. The nomadic people of the Ogaden Desert retained endemic smallpox with an unusually mild form of the disease, which facilitated persistence in the population. From 1975, WHO efforts were concentrated on this region. Ethiopia saw its last case in August 1976 and Kenya in February 1977.