Ali Maow Maalin

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Ali Maow Maalin was the last person in the world known to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox. At age 23, Maalin was a cook at the hospital in the town of Merca, Somalia, as well as an occasional vaccinator for a World Health Organization smallpox eradication team. In October 1977, he went out to meet two children with smallpox symptoms being brought in from an outlying village. On 26 October 1977, he was diagnosed with an infection of the Variola minor strain of smallpox. Maalin had previously received the smallpox vaccine but was apparently in the small percentage of people for whom the vaccination does not take. He subsequently recovered.