Rinderpest is the first animal disease to be eradicated after the successful eradication of smallpox.

The highly contagious disease, sometimes called cattle plague or steppe murrain, has been a scourge for millennia and has killed millions of animals, including some wild species. It is part of a group of viruses including canine distemper, peste des petits ruminants and the measles virus for humans.

Mortality rates in case of rinderpest infection can reach 100 percent. Rinderpest has caused significant disruption and damage to agricultural supply chains throughout the world. It took decades of multi-national eradication campaigns and renewed efforts of national veterinary services and livestock owners to curb the resurgence of rinderpest, and finally, to eradicate the disease globally in 2011.

FAO member countries agreed to maintain world freedom from rinderpest and approved the destruction or sequestration of all remaining rinderpest virus containing materials.

Although rinderpest no longer occurs in livestock, the rinderpest virus-containing material is being stored in laboratories of 24 countries where it poses a risk through inadvertent or malicious release.

By protecting livestock from the deadly disease, we can increase livelihood resilience, food security, and nutrition. This contributes to reducing global poverty.

FAO is leading the process of reducing the number of laboratories keeping the virus by advocating for and offering assistance to destroy or relocate it to highly secure rinderpest holding facilities.

Disease surveillance to support early warning is seen as a critical component of the post-rinderpest eradication activities. FAO’s is working actively to strengthen national and global surveillance networks to rapidly detect, confirm and respond to any suspected rinderpest related events.

Early detection of suspicious and clinical events should lead to faster implementation of containment measures. The rinderpest related surveillance activities are conducted under the existing joint FAO–OIE–WHO Global Early Warning System (GLEWS) located in Rome.

Activities focus on improving national capacities for syndromic surveillance, case detection and reporting of suspicious events by stakeholders in high risk regions where rinderpest was historically found. Efforts also focus on improving global capacities through rumour tracking and prompt verification. Regional training on field outbreak methods to improve disease reporting will be conducted with a focus on data entry, analysis and reporting.