Smallpox Is A Highly Infectious And Deadly Disease Caused By A Virus

It is deadly and kills around three in every ten people who are infected by that virus. Few experts have estimated that in this century i.e. 20th century alone, approximately 300 million deaths were caused by smallpox.
There was a global smallpox immunization campaign that led to the eradication of this deadly disease in the late 1970s.
Even today, two government research laboratories among which one is in the United States while the other is in Russia hold the endmost remaining stores of the virus which is responsible for smallpox.
How a person gets to suffer from smallpox?
Smallpox is basically caused by the virus named variola that along with the monkeypox virus, vaccinia virus and cowpox virus belongs to genus Orthopoxvirus.
Majorly there are two types of variola virus that are- variola minor and variola major. The first rarely results in death while the second can lead to life-threatening illness.
We humans are the only alive and known carriers of variola virus. The other Orthopoxvirus viruses are generally transmitted to humans from the infected animals.
The Symptoms of Smallpox
When a person is infected with the perilous variola virus, then there is a non-symptomatic incubation period after that during which this virus replicates in his or hers body. This stage lasts somewhat from 7 to 19 days that to with an average of about 10 to 14 days.
The first symptoms are usually:
High fever
Body aches, including backaches
Headaches and
Vomiting
All these symptoms typically last for two to four days and they are severe enough to prevent a person from performing his normal day-to-day activities.

By: Prerana Sharma