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

This article examines the smallpox vaccination programme in postcolonial Tanzania from the1960s to the early 1980s as part of the postcolonial future making in preventive medicine.The article departs from extant scholarship on smallpox vaccination in postcolonialTanzania, which depicts the intervention as a success, while relegating to the backgroundchallenges associated with the intervention. The article argues that the smallpox vaccinationprogramme registered challenges and successes that offer lessons for combating of futureepidemics. The achievements of the programme were due to the adoption of specific publichealth policies, namely mass vaccination and public health education as well as reception ofexternal assistance from the World Health Organization and donor countries, the use of tencell house structure, and political mobilization. The obstacles included administrative,transport, and cultural problems. The article adds to the historiography of public health inTanzania, and it has the potential of offering lessons on dealing with present and futureepidemics, especially Covid-19 and Mpox.