The Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP) is a time-bound programme to eliminate rinderpest from the world by the year 2010. Strategies have been devised and programmes implemented to reduce the clinical incidence of rinderpest to zero. Elimination of disease and infection will be confirmed by statistically valid active disease surveillance programmes.

RINDERPEST ZONES OF RISK

RINDERPEST PROGRESS 1994-2002

Rinderpest risk zones 1995/96 - 1996/97

The Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme has shown that:

1. National rinderpest campaigns have been successful

2. Rinderpest is now confined to defined foci in Eastern Africa, South and West Asia

3. An outbreack of rinderpest outside the known endemic foci should be treat Emergency

4. Mass vaccination of national/regional herds is no longer necessary

5. GREP strategy everywhere should emphasise:

		EARLY WARNING
		through enhanced and purposeful rinderpest surveillance supported by appropriate laboratory diagnostic technology and targeted sero-surveillance.
		EARLY REACTION
		based on practical contingency plans and specific rinderpest emergency preparedness
		CONTINGENCY PLANNING
		NATIONAL COMMITMENT TO THE OIE PATHWAY

Rinderpest eradication by 2010 - Why action is now more Important than ever

Within the next decade there is a very real prospect that rinderpest will become, like smallpox in humans, a disease of the past. Today, as we enter a new millennium, progress made by the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP), has limited the disease to a small number of sites in eastern Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. But the spectre of cattle plague, with its devastating epidemics of the past, continues to be a threat as long as these few small areas harbour rinderpest. So, intensified action for these remaining pockets of rinderpest infection is being promoted and co-ordinated by FAO under GREP.

Background

The control of rinderpest to the point we are at today has been a remarkable triumph for veterinary science and national commitment but it has not been achieved without setbacks. As recently as the 1980s, rinderpest raged across Africa, and this occurred at a time when the disease was thought to have been beaten after a very successful international vaccination campaign through the 1960s and 1970s. But with hindsight, the campaign stopped too soon and, from small remaining pockets of infection, the disease escaped. Countries were not prepared, the cattle vulnerable and the cattle plague spread rapidly, just as it had nearly a century before, when the majority of domestic cattle and susceptible wildlife were killed in a broad swathe across sub-Saharan Africa. A similar pattern of rinderpest epidemics was also experienced in Asia in the 1980s when the disease spread back from South Asia to borders of Europe. The lesson of these events is that near eradication is not good enough.

Is complete eradication possible?

YES. The world is on course to total eradication by 2010 as long as commitment is sustained – complacency is the enemy.

What remains to be done?

The last few foci of the disease must be located, contained and eliminated. Where there are suspicions that the disease could be lurking, these must be verified and dealt with. This needs innovative community-based programmes in remote and insecure areas. The means are available, all we need to do is apply them.

RINDERPEST ZONES OF RISK

And if we stop now?

Apart from the waste of all the effort and money over the years, the risk of the disease spreading back with its inevitable devastating effect on livestock farming, food security, rural incomes and international trade is too great to contemplate.

The cost of continuing?

It is estimated that about US$ 12 million could be enough to eradicate disease from the last four foci. Compare this to the US$ 2 billion estimated total loss from the outbreaks in Africa alone in the 1980s, and with the estimated US$ 100 million spent each year world-wide on vaccination, money that could be saved by total eradication of the disease.

How is total eradication to be achieved?

The internationally accepted OIE Pathway is a timetable for the route to eradication.

Who benefits from a world free from rinderpest?

Ultimately everyone benefits through greater global food security, enhanced international trade, and conservation of wildlife.

The wildlife connection

Rinderpest can pass between wildlife and cattle but once the disease is eliminated from cattle it dies out naturally in wildlife. Eradication of rinderpest, thus, serves to safeguard the wildlife heritage as well as rural livelihoods dependent on it.

SUMMARY

Eliminating rinderpest from the world will help to improve food security and the livelihood of the rural poor. In this sense, the battle against rinderpest is also the fight against poverty. It can be done, but a last effort is needed to ensure that the job is finished through true commitment of all involved.

INTENSIFIED GREP

The Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP) Technical Consultation and EMPRES Expert Consultation held in Rome in September/October 1998 reviewed the progress made in rinderpest eradication and endorsed the view of the GREP Secretariat that a more vigorous approach is required if global freedom is to be attained by the year 2010. Experts unanimously endorsed the need for an Intensified GREP to complement the existing activities and focus on clarifying any remaining areas of uncertainty and elimination of the last remaining foci of persisting infection in the shortest possible time. GREP commenced throughout the world in the 1980s with mass immunisation campaigns which extended control to a point where, as described below, the remaining foci of endemicity are few, distinct and isolated. The internationally agreed procedure to verify eradication (the OIE Pathway) commences with the cessation of rinderpest vaccination once a country is satisfied that it has experienced no clinical rinderpest disease for two years. Many countries that were affected in the 1980s no longer experience rinderpest and have either ceased, or intend to cease, vaccination and have entered on the OIE Pathway or are expected to do so in the near future. For example, for Africa, the Pan-African Rinderpest Campaign (PARC) strategy is for all countries to declare provisional freedom from rinderpest for either the whole country or for zones of countries in which foci of infection persist. Similarly for Asia, all countries east of Pakistan are being advised to cease vaccination and embark on the OIE Pathway, as Indian and Bhutan have already done, and several countries in the Near East are similarly ceasing vaccination. As a result most of the world's cattle and buffalo population will soon become completely susceptible to rinderpest. This period of increasing vulnerability is unavoidable if global eradication is to be achieved and the transition period to final eradication requires careful management. Accordingly, the EMPRES Expert Consultation of October 1998 advised that the continuing presence of a few foci of rinderpest in parts of Africa, West and South Asia can not be regarded simply as matters of national or local concern. Such foci now pose a grave risk to the world cattle population and their prompt and assured elimination calls for a concerted international action involving national governments, the donor community, non-governmental organisations and the international community. Appropriate financial and other supportive commitments are now sought to be directed at the single objective of eliminating the residual foci of rinderpest in the world within the next five years.