[3] Grasset served as SEARO's principal smallpox adviser and held this post through the achievement and certification of eradication in India and Nepal.

She joined the program after working as a Red Cross adviser, a role in which she provided vaccination and medical care in the Nigerian civil war zone of Biafra.

The eradication unit set up teams of international and Indian workers, who were given the responsibility of going into the states, searching for cases, and performing containment and vaccination strategies.

Henderson, the person in charge of the World Health Organization eradication unit, described her as an "energetic, determined, charismatic leader".

[5] Referring to her spirit of public service and her impeccable dress-ups, she has been called "one of the great saints, a mother Teresa in a Dior dress".