William H. Foege, MD Professor and Health Policy Fellow, Emory
University Former Head, CDC (Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention) William H. Foege stands tall as a front-line leader
in one of the most ambitious public health efforts of the 20th
century: the successful eradication of smallpox. He has also
been instrumental in child survival efforts, HIV/AIDS
prevention, and the current quest to eradicate polio. Foege is
also literally quite tall. The former director of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, Foege tells the story of a
time his stature came in handy. In the 1970s, when he went to
India to lead the smallpox eradication campaign there, he
enlisted a creative village chief's help in assembling the local
people. "The chief told his drummer to begin pounding on a
'talking drum,'" Foege recalls. "People came flowing into the
village. Almost as fast as people moved past, we vaccinated
them. After two hours we had finally finished. I said to the
chief: 'I'm very impressed. How do you have