William Herbert Foege is an American physician and epidemiologist who is credited with "devising the global strategy that led to the eradication of smallpox in the late 1970s". From May 1977 to 1983, Foege served as the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Foege also "played a central role" in efforts that greatly increased immunization rates in developing countries in the 1980s.
In June 2011, he authored House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox, a book on modern science, medicine, and public health over the smallpox disease.
On September 23, 2020, he sent a private letter to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert R. Redfield urging him to acknowledge in writing that the CDC had responded poorly to COVID-19 and to set a new course for how CDC would lead the United States' response, calling the White House's approach "disastrous."
