Smallpox killed fifty to sixty thousand Egyptian children per year before vaccination programs

Evidence

As early as 1819 he ordered his deputy to institute a program of vaccination against smallpox throughout the country. This must have been prompted by the exceedingly heavy toll it took on the population: Clot Bey says that on his arrival in Egypt in 1825 smallpox was “cruelly ravaging the country. Every year it killed no fewer than fifty to sixty thousand children,” making it alone responsible for increasing the infant mortality rate by 40 or 50 per thousand, in turn raising the overall annual death rate to something between 3 and 4 per thousand. … As a result of these efforts, by the late 1840s the Azbakiyya Hospital in Cairo was vaccinating children at the rate of 600 per month. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1114

Categorization

• SHARE: The specific mortality figure — 50-60,000 children/year from smallpox raising infant mortality by 40-50 per thousand — is a striking statistic for anyone interested in 19th-century population history.