Concurrently with the declaration of the global eradication of smallpox in May 1980, the Global Commission was dissolved and, in 1981, a new six-member committee—the Committee on Orthopoxvirus Infections—was established by the Director-General of WHO. Its membership was drawn from the Global Commission, and I was appointed chairman of the Committee. Except in 1985, this Committee met annually in Geneva from 1981 to 1986, critically reviewed the progress made in the post-smallpox-eradication program, and advised WHO on the implementation of the Global Committee's recommendations. The Committee was serviced by a reduced Smallpox Eradication Unit, with Arita as Chief, two and later one other medical officer, an operations officer and support staff, all of whom had had extensive experience in the eradication program.
The meeting reviewed the implementation of WHO's post-smallpox eradication policy under seven groups of topics: vaccination policy, reserve stocks of vaccine, investigation of suspected cases of smallpox, laboratories retaining variola virus, human monkeypox, laboratory investigations of orthopoxviruses, and archives and publications. The results of the meeting were published (Arita and Gromyko, 1982), some of the more important of which are outlined below. Although vaccination had been discontinued in 149 of the 158 Member States, it was still being used for military personnel in some countries. The Committee advised that this practice should be discontinued. Since eradication, there had been 63 rumours of new smallpox cases in 1979, 31 rumours in 1980, and 30 in 1981. All were carefully investigated; none had been smallpox. The Committee endorsed a plan for continued monkeypox surveillance in four countries in West and Central Africa, and it noted with satisfaction that the records of the eradication program had been established in archival mode and that there was a comprehensive inventory and guide indicating what was in each of the files. It also endorsed the establishment of a five-person editorial group to prepare for the proposed book on the eradication program (see below).
The Committee highly commended WHO for diligently implementing the recommendations of the 33rd World Health Assembly regarding activities to be undertaken in the post-smallpox eradication era. Matters for note were: (1) that WHO had established two refrigerated depots for vaccine storage, in Geneva and New Delhi, with a reserve sufficient for vaccinating 200 million persons; (2) that there were now only three laboratories retaining stocks of variola virus and that it was possible that the stocks held in South Africa would be destroyed before the next meeting; (3) that continuance of surveillance of monkeypox should be continued in Zaire beyond 1985; and (4) that DNA fragments from three strains of variola virus had been cloned into recombinant plasmids and that these materials were available through WHO for more detailed analysis of the variola virus genome, which could be safely conducted outside maximum containment laboratories.
The Committee again commended WHO for effectively implementing the recommendations of the 33rd World Health Assembly regarding post-smallpox activities. It noted that 160 of the 162 Member States had now discontinued routine vaccination. However, because problems had arisen with storage facilities in New Delhi, the stocks of vaccine stored there had been transferred to Lausanne. I had visited South Africa in September 1983, in the hope of persuading the authorities there to destroy their stocks of variola virus while I was there. The scientists were willing, but the Minister for Health would not bow to outside pressure. However, they did destroy their stocks in the presence of Keith Dumbell, a member of the Committee, in December 1983. The only remaining stocks of variola virus were those in the WHO Collaborating Centres in Moscow and the Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia. A WHO team had visited the high containment laboratories in each of these centres and found that they fulfilled WHO requirements for such laboratories. Surveillance for human monkeypox in Zaire had been greatly intensified and more cases had been discovered. The Committee recommended that surveillance there should be intensified and continued until 1989. A summary of the current situation was published by the Committee in 1984 (WHO, 1984). In addition, it saw the investigation of smallpox rumours and the maintenance of smallpox vaccine reserves as major activities that would need to be continued beyond 1985.
This was an important meeting, because the Committee had been established with the intention of operating for no more than five years after its establishment in 1981. The principal problem it tackled was whether all stocks of variola virus should be destroyed. In preparation for this, Keith Dumbell, on behalf of the Committee, had consulted some 60 virologists in 21 countries, only five of whom thought that stocks should be maintained indefinitely. Based on this, the availability from WHO of plasmids contained cloned fragments of the variola genome, and their own analysis, the Committee concluded that there was now no need to retain stocks of variola virus. A new discovery from the monkeypox surveillance project in Zaire was that squirrels were an important animal reservoir of monkeypox virus (WHO, 1986).
Surveying the situation in 1986, the Committee considered that there was no further need for its existence, but suggested that WHO might need to set up ad hoc committees at various times to consider specific problems that might arise. Such occasions arose in 1990 and 1994.