Question 2: Discuss the significant cultural factors that had to be addressed in order for the World Health Organization’s Smallpox Eradication Campaign to be successful. You need have good understanding of the World Health Organization's smallpox eradication campaign from Curtin and Gaither's book -International Public Relations to answer this (case study session). In it you will see how the campaign is used to illustrate different theories covered during the course.
Smallpox Eradication Campaign is considered as one of the greatest success of the World Health Organization in its history. By mass vaccination decision, World Health Organization had eliminated the disease that killed hundreds of millions of people for the last 3,000 …show more content…

After that they persuaded local variolators to become vaccinators instead, which associated vaccination with local religious figures and rituals. As S. Gunaratne evaluated that “At every level national and World Health Organization’s staff worked shoulder to shoulder, pursuing their goal with technical competent, dedication and enthusiasm”. From this circumstance, we can see that the World Health Organization’s workers bring the issue inherent in the overlap of the private and public spheres to the fore, which mentioned in the moment of consumption. The Washington Post used to say that by being cast as a miracle, eradication became an achievement blessed by fates and gods, lending moral superiority to it, and its complexities were reduced to a simple, singular event.
It is saying “Custom rules the law” and this saying was considered as cultural factor, local norms. It causes many difficulties to campaign workers who came from more than dozen different nations. As example of Curtin and Gaither showed that “in many areas of Asia, it was customary to visit the sick, which increased the spread of smallpox; but in much of Africa, it was customary to isolate victims, which helped halt disease spread and contributed to the quick success rate there”. Or the case in India which often happened conflicts but they still tried to keep their social custom by various ways. For the World Health