If you are getting rid of a disease, what are you doing to it?

If you are getting rid of a disease, you are eradicating it.

To eradicate means to remove or destroy something completely. In public health, eradication has a particularly strict meaning: a disease or its causative agent is eliminated worldwide, so ongoing routine interventions are no longer needed to prevent its return.

Smallpox is the clearest example. Through a coordinated global vaccination and surveillance campaign, naturally occurring smallpox transmission was stopped, and the World Health Organization certified its eradication in 1980. It remains the only human disease officially eradicated worldwide.

Eradication is often confused with elimination and control. Elimination usually means stopping transmission in a particular geographic area, while control means reducing disease to an acceptable level. Polio, for example, has been eliminated in many regions but has not yet been eradicated globally. The verb “eradicating” is therefore the precise answer for completely getting rid of a disease.