Rinderpest, an infectious disease that has wiped out cattle and devastated their keepers for millennia, is gone. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) announced today in Rome that an eradication effort launched in 1994 has achieved its goal and that fieldwork has ended.
"It is probably the most remarkable achievement in the history of veterinary science," says Peter Roeder, a British veterinarian involved with FAO's Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP) from its launch in 1994 until he retired in 2007.
Rinderpest's eradication won't be official, however, until the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) certifies the rinderpest-free status of a handful of remaining countries. That process should be completed by the time of OIE's May assembly, at which time a formal declaration will be made. It will be just the second time in history a devastating viral disease has been wiped off the face of the earth, the first being the human disease smallpox, declared vanquished in 1980.
Although nearly forgotten in much of the West, as recently as the early 1900s, outbreaks of rinderpest—from the German for "cattle plague"—regularly ravaged cattle herds across all of Eurasia and throughout the Middle East and Africa. The virus, a relative of those that cause canine distemper and human measles, spreads through exhaled droplets and feces of sick animals; it causes fever, diarrhea, dehydration, and death in a matter of days. It primarily affects the young; animals that survive an infection are immune for life. Outbreaks in Eurasia, where rinderpest was endemic throughout history, often claimed one-third or more of the calves in any herd.
The horrific impact on naïve herds was seen when the virus was inadvertently introduced to the horn of Africa in 1889. In less than a decade, the virus reached South Africa. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, it killed 90% of the cattle and large proportions of domestic oxen used to pull plows, and decimated wild buffalo, giraffe, and wildebeest populations. With herding, farming, and hunting devastated, famine claimed an estimated one-third of the population of Ethiopia and two-thirds of the Maasai people of Tanzania.
European countries gradually eliminated rinderpest in the early years of the 20th century through surveillance and culling of sick and exposed animals. It continued to afflict Asia and Africa in the second half of the 20th century, re-emerging when several eradication campaigns were shut down in the mistaken belief that the virus had been wiped out.
In 1994, FAO brought together several regional rinderpest-control programs into GREP with the goal of eliminating the disease by 2010. "At times, I was pessimistic that we were going to get anywhere," says Roeder. The key technical breakthrough was understanding the epidemiology of the virus: that it was re-emerging from just a handful of reservoirs that could be the targets of improved vaccines. As the program started demonstrating progress, countries initially skeptical or reluctant to share information on the extent of their rinderpest problem started cooperating. The virus was last detected in 2001 in wild buffaloes in Meru National Park in Kenya. "From a food security point of view, this is a tremendous accomplishment," says FAO's chief veterinary officer Juan Lubroth in an interview on the organization's Web page.
With one down, animal-health experts are pondering how to apply the lessons learned to the next target, which could be the peste des petites ruminants virus, which is highly contagious and lethal among sheep and goats. Another issue facing FAO is ensuring the safe keeping of viral samples and vaccines accumulated in labs around the world.
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