Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP)
On June 28, during the 37th FAO Conference, the 192 Member countries of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) adopted a Resolution declaring global freedom from rinderpest, making it the first animal disease to be eliminated thanks to human efforts, and only the second disease of any kind, after smallpox in humans.
The resolution also called on the world community to follow up by ensuring that samples of rinderpest viruses and vaccines be kept under safe laboratory conditions and that rigorous standards for disease surveillance and reporting be applied.
Rinderpest has been known – and dreaded – for many millennia. Wherever it has occurred, the deadly animal disease has killed livestock and wildlife, posing a significant threat to rural livelihoods and food security.
Since its founding, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has assisted affected member countries in Africa, Asia and Europe in their efforts to control rinderpest. With the launching in 1994 of the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP), FAO spearheaded an initiative to consolidate gains in rinderpest control and to move towards outright eradication of the disease.
Working in close association with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), GREP, operates as an international coordination mechanism that promotes the global eradication of rinderpest (and verification of freedom from rinderpest) while providing the technical guidance to achieve these goals. From the outset, GREP, a key element within the Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases known as EMPRES, was a time-bound programme expected to lead to a declaration of global freedom from rinderpest by 2011.
Initially, GREP put much effort into determining the geographical distribution and epidemiology of the disease. Later, it promoted actions to contain rinderpest within infected eco-systems and to eliminate reservoirs of infection through epidemiologically and intelligence-based control programmes. Once experts had accumulated evidence that the virus had likely been eliminated, GREP's activities progressively focused on establishing surveillance systems to verify the absence of the disease.