‘Prevention is Better Than Cure’: Smallpox Vaccination in Postcolonial Tanzania, 1961–1980

Abstract

This article examines the smallpox vaccination programme in postcolonial Tanzania from the 1960s to the early 1980s as part of the postcolonial future making in preventive medicine. The article departs from extant scholarship on smallpox vaccination in postcolonial Tanzania, which depicts the intervention as a success, while relegating to the background challenges associated with the intervention. The article argues that the smallpox vaccination programme registered challenges and successes that offer lessons for combating of future epidemics. The achievements of the programme were due to the adoption of specific public health policies, namely mass vaccination and public health education as well as reception of external assistance from the World Health Organization and donor countries, the use of ten-cell house structure, and political mobilization. The obstacles included administrative, transport, and cultural problems. The article adds to the historiography of public health in Tanzania, and it has the potential of offering lessons on dealing with present and future epidemics, especially Covid-19 and Mpox.