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Destruction of smallpox virus delayed

Report

Smallpox was eradicated in 1979 but two stocks of live smallpox virus remain.

For years the debate over what to do with them has raged. In Geneva developing countries argued it was high time to destroy all known samples of a virus which in the past claimed millions of lives.

But the United States and Russia, the two countries which hold the virus samples, wanted to keep them for at least another five years saying that if smallpox ever re-emerged, either by accident or even deliberately, the samples could be needed to create a vaccine.

That argument seemed finally after days of division to sway member states, and they approved a compromise - postponing a decision on destroying the virus samples for another three years.

And so the fate of one of the world's deadliest viruses is still not decided and the debate over whether the world is safer with it, or without it, will continue.

Imogen Foulkes, BBC News, Geneva