The Outbreak
In early 1972, a 38-year-old Kosovo Albanian Muslim clergyman named Ibrahim Hoti, from Damnjane near Đakovica, Kosovo, Serbia, undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca. He also visited holy sites in Iraq, where there were known cases of smallpox. He returned home on February 15. The following morning he felt achy and tired, but attributed this to the long bus journey. Hoti soon realised that he had some kind of infection, but, after feeling feverish for a couple of days and developing a rash, he recovered - probably because he had been vaccinated two months earlier.
On March 3, Latif Musa, a thirty-year-old schoolteacher, who had just arrived in Đakovica to enroll at the local higher institute of education, fell ill. He had no known direct contacts with the clergyman, so he might have been infected by one of the clergyman's friends or relatives who visited him during his illness, or by passing the clergyman in the street.
When Musa visited the local medical center two days later, the doctors tried to treat his fever with penicillin (smallpox is a virus, so this was ineffective). His condition didn't improve, and after a couple of days his brother took him to the hospital in Čačak, 150 km to the north in Serbia. The doctors there could not help him, so he was transferred by ambulance to the central hospital in Belgrade.
On March 9, Musa was shown to medical students and staff as a case of an atypical reaction to penicillin, which was a plausible explanation for his condition. On the following day, Musa suffered massive internal bleeding and, despite efforts to save his life, died in the evening.
The cause of death was listed as "reaction to penicillin". In fact he had contracted black pox, a highly contagious form of smallpox. Before his death, Musa directly infected 38 people (including nine doctors and nurses), eight of whom would consequently die.
A few days after Musa's death, a wave of 140 smallpox cases erupted across Kosovo province.
Read more about this topic: 1972 Outbreak Of Smallpox In Yugoslavia