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November 2002 -- Experts are increasingly confident that the
virus responsible for the devastating livestock disease
rinderpest is no longer present in three of its last reserves,
in Pakistan, Sudan and Yemen. Efforts are underway to eradicate
the last traces of the disease in northeast Kenya and southern
Somalia in order to meet a global deadline of 2010 for declaring
the world completely free from the disease.
It would be only the second disease eradicated in
history, after smallpox. Rinderpest has
always been the most dreaded bovine plague -- a highly
infectious viral disease that can destroy entire populations of
cattle and buffaloes. In regions that depend on cattle for meat,
milk products and draft power, rinderpest has caused widespread
famine and inflicted serious economic and political damage
although the virus does not affect humans directly. A rinderpest
outbreak that raged across much of Africa in 1982-84 is
estimated to have cost at least US$2 billion.
Sudan vaccinates a million cattle
The mass vaccination of a million cattle in
southeastern Sudan between May 2001 and May 2002 has contributed
to growing confidence that the virus has finally been eliminated
in that country. The story of this
campaign in a harsh land beset by civil war begins in the early
1990s, when UNICEF encountered resistance to its child
vaccination programme in southern Sudan. "Vaccinate our
cattle and then you can vaccinate our children, because if our
cattle die, then our children will die anyway," they
were told by villagers who feared rinderpest above all other
diseases. Joined by US-based Tufts University, and
non-governmental organizations, UNICEF launched a livestock
programme within Operation Lifeline Sudan. A new vaccine that
didn't need constant refrigeration helped the effort
considerably. So did a community-based animal health network, in
which respected herders were taught how to provide services to
their communities, most importantly delivering rinderpest
vaccination. FAO took over Operation
Lifeline Sudan in 2000 and, working with many partners, narrowed
down the likely final hiding place of the rinderpest virus to
the herds of the Murle and Jie tribes. Operating in remote bush
without roads or infrastructure, the vaccination drive had to
work on both sides of a conflict-racked area.
"FAO was the neutral party that could work
with both sides in the conflict," says Dr Peter Roeder,
Secretary of FAO's Global Rinderpest Eradication
Programme. "We pushed the campaign towards eradication
rather than control. We mobilized all the players - NGOs,
herders, government - to go in and vaccinate approximately 1
million cattle belonging to the Murle and Jie peoples, cattle
which had never been effectively vaccinated before."
Recent missions to Sudan by FAO Operation
Lifeline Sudan and the Pan-African Programme for the Control of
Epizootics have found no evidence of the virus causing disease,
he notes. "If confirmed, this will be a remarkable
achievement for all concerned parties, achieved by concerted
action sustained over many years despite very serious
constraints." Asia
without rinderpest In Asia, the
last reported outbreak of rinderpest was in Sindh Province,
Pakistan in October 2000. Since then, investigations supported
by the European Union and FAO suggest that the disease is no
longer present in the country. Achieving eradication would be a
remarkable success for the Pakistani authorities. Even recent
massive movements of buffaloes and some cattle from Sindh and
Punjab Provinces, Pakistan, to Afghanistan, with some onward
trade to Iran, have not been accompanied by rinderpest, as one
would have expected in the past. Recent
FAO-supported studies in Yemen suggest that the disease died out
about five years ago. This confidence is due to concerted
surveillance efforts by the Government and FAO with the
participation of cattle owners. The process was helped by
training in disease recognition,reporting and investigation
follow-up. "It is conceivable
that Asia isnow free from rinderpest for the first time in
millennia, although of course it will take some time before
freedom can be proved in accordance with internationally
accepted guidelines," says Dr Roeder.
Global freedom
To realize the goal of a Global Declaration of
complete freedom from rinderpest by the end of 2010, the virus
must be eradicated by the end of 2003. Then would follow years
of verification and virus containment, including steps such as
destroying lab samples of the virus. For
that to happen, an intense international effort must now focus
on the Somali pastoral ecosystem of northeast Kenya and southern
Somalia before the virus breaks out of its last stronghold
through the movement of nomadic herds or the export of cattle.
If all stakeholders seize the opportunity
to work together with the Pan-African Programme for the Control
of Epizootics of the African Union's Inter-African Bureau
of Animal Resources, and FAO, the prospects are better now than
ever before.
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