Smallpox is believed to have emerged in humam popuration about 10,000 thousand people in Egypt the disease killed an estimated 400,000 thousand people Europeans annually during the closing years of the 18th century (including five reigning monarchs), and was responsible for a third of all blindness. Of all those infected, 20–60 percent and over 80 percent of infected children died from the disease. Smallpox was responsible for an estimated 300–500 million deaths during the 20th century. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year.