Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP)
Rinderpest has been known for many millennia, and, wherever it occurred, it has been the most dreaded animal disease, strongly affecting livestock, rural livelihoods and food security.
Ever since its foundation, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has assisted Member countries to control rinderpest. With the launching in 1994 of the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP), however, FAO spearheaded an initiative to consolidate gains in rinderpest control and to move towards disease eradication. In close association with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), GREP, a key element within the Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases (EMPRES), was conceived as an international coordination mechanism to promote the global eradication of rinderpest and verification of rinderpest freedom, while providing technical guidance to achieve these goals. From the outset, GREP was a time-bound programme, due to end in 2010.
Initially GREP put much effort into establishing the geographical distribution and epidemiology of the disease. Subsequently it promoted actions to contain rinderpest within the infected eco-systems, and to eliminate reservoirs of infection through epidemiologically and intelligence-based control programmes. Once evidence accumulated that the virus had been eliminated, GREP’s activities progressively focused on establishing surveillance systems to prove the absence of the disease.
The launching of GREP was founded on the scientific understanding that the eradication of rinderpest was feasible. Not only has eradication proved feasible, it has probably already been achieved, and an international statement about Global Rinderpest Freedom is expected to be made within the year 2010. This would be the second time that a disease has been eradicated worldwide after smallpox in humans.