The global eradication of rinderpest, proclaimed in 2011, was a major milestone that parallels the extermination of smallpox worldwide in 1980. Both diseases, although caused by distinctly different viruses, inflicted untold misery and death for centuries and both diseases were finally overcome through the use of vaccines. This book, a collaboration under the lead of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) together with a wide range of contributors, traces the history of the highly contagious rinderpest disease from its first appearance to its eradication. Rinderpest appears to have spread from Central Asia westwards into Europe early in the first millennium AD. Around the same time, it also swept to Siberia and East Asia, as well as southwards to the Indian subcontinent. From the early 17th century, rinderpest control was explored in Europe; however, during the 18th and 19th centuries it remained endemic, with an overall death rate that numbered in the millions. The disease continued to be in Asia and by 1887, also reached Africa in epidemic proportions. At the start of the 19th century, there was no effective treatment or prophylaxis available and attempts to reduce the disease’s impact in Europe relied on strong zoo-sanitary regulations, supported by related legislation – an approach that resulted in the abolition of rinderpest. With advances in modern medicine, vaccination became an effective tool to protect cattle from rinderpest. Early vaccines made it possible not only to protect cattle, but more importantly to control rinderpest at the continental level. Recurring epidemics of rinderpest led directly to the foundation of the OIE in 1924, and controlling such outbreaks through international vaccination efforts was central to FAO’s first international assistance programme after its founding in 1945. Indeed, FAO considered that, among the many threatening livestock diseases, rinderpest was the prime candidate for global eradication. In the period immediately after the Second World War to the early 1960s, new vaccines became available and an ambitious internationally-funded mass vaccination programme was introduced. By 1994, FAO observed that rinderpest was under control in Eurasia, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Africa, and concluded that a window of opportunity existed to achieve global eradication. Success hinged, however, on major international funding to support national Veterinary Services in a Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme. Following a large-scale coordinated response and funding effort, the last case of rinderpest occurred in 2001. A decade later, a Joint Committee of FAO and OIE experts concluded that the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme and the related strategy were successful in ensuring that ‘rinderpest as a freely circulating viral disease had been eliminated from the world’. This book celebrates the 2011 proclamation of a rinderpest-free world. It reviews the science and expertise that went into the eradication efforts; the contributions by numerous UN agencies and other international organisations as well as the outstanding role played by the national Veterinary Services involved.