A regional daily has published the findings of its three-year investigation into the last person in the world to die of smallpox.

The Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Live’s multi-media project ‘The Lonely Death of Janet Parker’ re-examines the story of how a young medical photographer caught the disease in the University of Birmingham 40 years ago and subsequently died as a result.

The investigation, led by veteran Mail journalist Andy Richards, has been presented as a four-part podcast accompanied by a seven-part series in the Mail and a multimedia feature on Birmingham Live produced using the storytelling tool Shorthand.

The podcast tells the story of how Mrs Parker suddenly fell ill, but smallpox was only diagnosed after several days had elapsed.

In the days that followed, thousands of people were given the smallpox vaccine, and dozens were tracked down and put in quarantine after being tracked down by police.

Andy interviewed several of the people affected, including the ambulanceman who took her to hospital.

In a “shocking” twist, the podcast recounts how a person central to the case killed themselves in circumstances that raised serious questions about the behaviour of the media.

Said Andy: “Use the word ‘smallpox’ in medical circles and you soon realise there is an abiding sensitivity over the virus even though it was banished 40 years ago.

“For instance, with social media and the issue of fake news in mind, we wanted to ask how health authorities would cope with a real outbreak of something equally nasty nowadays. They weren’t keen to talk.”

The four half-hour episodes, which can be found here, were produced in collaboration with Lucy Ryan, a Masters student and producer at Birmingham City University’s broadcast radio course.

Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Live editor Marc Reeves said: “This is possibly the most ambitious and largest multi-platform media projects we’ve ever undertaken.

“This is such an important story that deserves re-telling, especially given the new perspectives and information uncovered by Andy through his dogged pursuit of this investigation.”

He added: “This has been a fascinating project, with many challenges that Andy and the team have had to overcome. It would be nothing without the work of the amazing team at BCU and we’ve learned a great deal from the process.

“Birmingham Live is all about finding new ways to tell the stories of the city, and this is a great example of this.”