“Searching for Stiala Mata: Eradicating Smallpox in India,” the memoir written by semi-retired public health specialist and Ajijic resident Dr. Cornelia (Connie) Davis, is receiving a great deal of attention.
Last week, Davis received a copy of the spring issue of her alma mater’s alumni association magazine and discovered a lengthy article filled with quotes, clips and photos from the book, along with two of the beautiful portraits taken of Davis by lakeside photographer Xill Fessenden.
Davis began her overseas odyssey back in May 1975, just as she finished her pediatric residency in Los Angeles. The World Health Organization (WHO) was looking for young doctors to eke out the remaining smallpox cases that were popping up in the remote regions of India – places where the government wasn’t doing enough.
Davis was surprised to get a call from the WHO but was willing to give the one-year assignment a shot, just for the experience and the value of the adventure.
This was to be the final sweep to eradicate smallpox from India, the winding down of the WHO’s 1968 mandate to rid the world of the disease. For centuries smallpox had been as feared and as deadly as is Ebola today. Smallpox killed in days, the pustules rising all over the body, especially on the face and extremities. Facial scars disfigured and identified the lucky survivors.
The WHO needed to be convinced about sending a young woman into the rural zones of a country still teeming with entrenched sexist visions and caste restrictions. The WHO “wanted young doctors they could put at the district level, give them a vehicle, a driver and a paramedic and money. We had the funds to hire people to vaccinate. We had to get the work done,” Davis says.
As one year slipped into two, Davis chased down rumors of villagers or rice growers with rashes and fevers. Most rumored incidents proved to be chicken pox. But when she encountered a patient she suspected to be ill with smallpox, she sent scabs from the pustules to the lab for verification. Meanwhile she set up a system for containing the patient and those who had been in close contact with the family and neighbors, vaccinating everyone within one kilometer and searching for additional rash and fever patients in a ten-kilometer area.
As Davis searched for smallpox, she became very familiar with Sitala Mata, the Hindu goddess of smallpox, and she experienced a lifetime of experiences and adventures. She met Mother Teresa, rode across the Thar desert on camelback, slipped across volatile Indo-Bangladeshi borders, negotiated with smugglers and fakirs and climbed to the base camp of Mount Everest.
In the end, India was certified smallpox free. And Davis, who after two years in challenging terrain and difficult customs, was out of a job and back in California where she settled down and set up her pediatric practice.
A year later she received a call from D. A. Henderson, the director of the eradication program who had moved on to become dean of the John Hopkins Medical School of Public Health. To her surprise he made her an offer she couldn’t refuse: a full scholarship for a master’s degree in public health.
With her master’s completed, Davis joined what was then called the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, and continued working overseas.
Over the years, she worked and lived in Africa and Asia. In Africa alone she confronted diseases such as malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS, meningococcal meningitis, yellow fever, cholera, Rift Valley hemorrhagic fever and highly pathogenic avian influenza, the most virulent of what is commonly known as bird flu.
While Davis declined requests to consult in the Ebola outbreak, she has accepted a new mission on malaria in Cambodia.
“I guess it couldn’t be just a normal malaria consultancy,” she says. “I’ve almost never worked on the usual and mundane. This strain of malaria in Cambodia is resistant to standard treatment.”
Davis’ book, “Searching for Sitala Mata: Eradicating Smallpox in India” is available on Amazon.com.