Kirk here reporting on a very important person whom I’m sorry to say I didn’t know about until I heard of his passing.
—- start quote —- Isao Arita (1926 – 17 March 2023) was a Japanese physician, virologist and vaccination specialist who headed the World Health Organization (WHO) Smallpox Eradication Unit in 1977–85. During this period, smallpox became the first infectious disease of humans to be eradicated globally. For this work, he and his colleagues were awarded the Japan Prize in 1988. —- end quote —- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isao_Arita
His passing has been covered a good deal in the Japanese-language media but I haven’t been able to find anything in English. This is one of many examples of news that I would think should be covered in English too (you know, head of the WHO, eradication of smallpox is not exactly small potatoes) – but that isn’t. Another reason to learn Japanese – there’s quite a lot of information that’s available in Japanese that never gets translated.
Photo taken from: https://www.japanprize.jp/en/prize_past_1988_prize02.html