Smallpox Vaccine Then and Now: A Look at How Smallpox Vaccination Efforts Have Changed in 80 Years in Maryland

The World Health Organization . This is after a surge in cases in the last 18 months, with and with . The epidemic was brought under control through the use of the . This is because Mpox and smallpox are related, so the smallpox vaccine provides cross-protection against Mpox. However, even with the end of the emergency, . Some cases in that outbreak include people fully vaccinated, but the recommendation for the smallpox vaccine remains because — as always — some protection is better than no protection. And, as with other vaccines, the evidence is clear that people who are vaccinated are at less risk of developing serious complications from the disease if they get it, compared to people who are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated.

Because of my work at a local health department, I received the first dose of the smallpox vaccine in January 2023 and the second dose in February 2023. Below is an image of my vaccination record taken from the online application used by the Maryland Department of Health to track vaccination status. I keep a printed copy in my files at home, and a copy on a cloud server should I need them.

Back in the 1930s, in Baltimore, smallpox vaccination certificates were little yellow slips of paper that included the date of the reading of the vaccination. The vaccine used then triggers a specific type of scar that trained healthcare providers interpret as “successful” or “unsuccessful” reaction to the vaccine. The reading was done by a health officer, Dr. David H. Andrew (). Prior to the vaccination shown below, .

As was the case in many localities in the United States, smallpox vaccination was a requirement in Baltimore. At the turn of the 20th century, those who refused to be vaccinated . (This was around the same time the US Supreme Court ruled in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that .)

Developed nations are moving more toward electronic health records, as technology and resources (and policy) allow it. Developing nations still use paper records, .

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