1975

Rahima Banu

Rahima Banu develops the world's last naturally acquired case of variola major

The team expecting chickenpox needed a speedboat, a steamer, a jeep and a final walk to reach the village of the last naturally acquired variola major patient.

October 1975: a cable from Bhola Island

On 16 October 1975, Rahima Banu, a three-year-old girl in Kuralia village on Bhola Island, Bangladesh, fell ill with what proved to be the world's final naturally acquired case of variola major — the more severe form of smallpox. The date is best documented as her illness onset, not the day of diagnosis; and though she is sometimes described as two years old, WHO's narrative history and CDC call her three.

Her case surfaced awkwardly: WHO had just announced Bangladesh had gone two months without a known case when a delayed report exposed continuing outbreaks around Kuralia — a medical officer had failed to report several of them. A WHO team reached the village only after a 24-hour journey by speedboat, steamer, jeep and finally on foot.

Containing the last chain

Rahima was quarantined at home under continuous guard, with food and money supplied so her family would not need to leave.

Vaccination teams covered a 1.5-mile radius around the infected house — about 18,000 people — while searchers hunted for further cases. No later naturally acquired variola major case was found.

Last of the worst — not the last of all

The old article's title overstates the claim: Rahima was the last natural case of variola *major*, not of all smallpox. Variola minor continued circulating in Africa; Ali Maow Maalin of Merca, Somalia, was the final naturally infected smallpox patient overall; his rash began in October 1977.

Asia was subsequently certified free of smallpox, and the global verification effort that followed the 1977 case ran for two more years before eradication was certified in December 1979.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes, 2 issues open Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at 1975-10-16.

What the sources leave uncertain

The year is secure, but 16 October 1975 is best documented as the onset/illness date, not necessarily the date on which clinicians first diagnosed and began treating her.
Sources vary between describing Rahima as two and three years old. WHO's narrative history and CDC's current history call her three; the listed title's “two-year-old” should not be retained without qualification.
This event is disputed as titled because Rahima was not the last naturally occurring smallpox patient overall. She was the last naturally occurring variola major patient. Ali Maow Maalin contracted naturally occurring variola minor in Somalia in 1977.