New York, Jan 25 (.) American physician William H. Foege, who developed the smallpox vaccination strategy that led to the eradication of the disease in the 1970s, has died at the age of 89 on Saturday evening at his home in Atlanta, the New York Times reported.
The publication called the smallpox eradication half a century ago “one of the world’s greatest public health triumphs.”
The cause of death, according to Foege’s friend and colleague Mark Rosenberg, was chronic heart failure.
Foege also served as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1977 to 1983, leading the early response to the AIDS epidemic in the United States, the newspaper recalled.
In 2012, then-US President Barack Obama awarded Foege the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, it said.
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