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Karel Raška (; 17 November 1909 in
Strašín Strašín is a municipality and village in Klatovy District in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 300 inhabitants. Strašín lies approximately south-east of Klatovy, south of Plzeň, and south-west of Prague. Administrative ...
– 21 November 1987 in Prague) was a Czech physician and epidemiologist, who headed the successful international effort during the 1960s to eradicate smallpox.


Life

Raška graduated from the gymnasium in
Sušice Sušice (; german: Schüttenhofen) is a town in Klatovy District in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 11,000 inhabitants. The historic town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument zone. Administr ...
, and later enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine of the
Charles University ) , image_name = Carolinum_Logo.svg , image_size = 200px , established = , type = Public, Ancient , budget = 8.9 billion CZK , rector = Milena Králíčková , faculty = 4,057 , administrative_staff = 4,026 , students = 51,438 , undergr ...
in Prague. He graduated in 1933. In 1948 he received his
habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
, and in 1955 received his professorship. At the end of World War II, together with epidemiologist František Patočka, he was personally leading measures to stop the spread of epidemic typhus in the
Terezín concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination ...
. Together they wrote a report describing the appalling conditions and mistreatment of German civilians incarcerated in the Small Fortress after the war ended. In 1952 he was appointed as the Director of the newly created Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Prague. He studied the hotspots of <