The last person to have a case of smallpox, Ali Maow Maalin, dedicated years of his life to eradicating polio in the region.

On July 22nd 2013, he died of Malaria, while traveling again after polio had been reintroduced.

Fantastic video – I'm really impressed with how you managed to match the high quality of the text. Thanks a lot for such great work!

Minor feedback about this post: I think the photo of the Yoruba folks might be a bit misleading in the context of this post, and I wouldn't include it. My sense is that the religion is followed by millions, that the radical smallpox-inoculation cult was quite fringe, and that the body painting of white dots doesn't have anything to do with smallpox. It doesn't seem fair to me to associate the whole religion and the folks in that photo with such a radical, harmful cult.

Nice. If you're looking for a follow-up, Jai's essays What Almost Was and The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics are also great. 

Edit: link fixed

This is my search optimisation brain talking, but I'd change the title to reference smallpox directly.

"Ending Smallpox: 500 Million, But Not A Single One More"