DFID Research: Ridding the world of rinderpest.
Scientific expertise has brought the rinderpest virus to the point of extinction, helping to protect the livelihoods of millions of livestock keepers
Rinderpest symptoms. Picture: Tim Leyland
Through a combination of scientific expertise and international collaboration and co-ordination, the eradication of the rinderpest virus (cattle plague) can be viewed as an achievement on par with the eradication of smallpox from the human population, the only other time an infectious disease has been eradicated.
Concerted effort by national veterinary services in both industrialised and developing countries, aided by international organisations, has brought the once dreaded rinderpest livestock disease to the point of extinction. In its severest form, rinderpest is capable of killing up to 95% of the animals it infects. However, the development of new vaccine technologies, community-based health delivery and disease searching techniques and diagnostic tools over the last 20 years has helped to protect the livelihoods of the livestock-dependent rural poor in developing countries and avoid massive financial losses in terms of milk, meat, and animal traction.
Since 1990, rinderpest control programmes have protected tens of millions of livestock keepers, particularly pastoralists whose cattle are their main livelihood assets, from experiencing major losses in milk, meat, hide production, and household income. Concurrently the control and eradication of rinderpest has also protected Africa’s wildlife population, as made evident by the recovery of wildebeest numbers in East Africa following the removal of rinderpest from local cattle populations.
Read the full version of this case study.
For further related information follow the links to the project records listed below:
- Development of capripox virus as a vector for vaccine
- Field trial in Kenya of the capripox/rinderpest recombinant virus
- Use of antibody labelled colloidal dyes for rapid pen-side differential of animal diseases
- Contained trial of modified recombinant capripox-rinderpest vaccine in Kenya
- Development of a genetically marked rinderpest vaccine
- Pen-side diagnostics for the detection of antibodies against a marked rinderpest virus (RPV) vaccine to allow differentiation of vaccinated from infected animals
- Community Animal Health and Participatory Epidemiology (CAPE) Project
Key references:
- Roeder, P., and K. Rich, (2009) Conquering the cattle plague: The global effort to eradicate rinderpest, in D.J. Spielman and R. Pandya-Lorch (eds.) (2009) Millions fed: Proven successes in agricultural development, IFPRI: Washington DC
- Roeder, P., and K. Rich, (2009) The global effort to eradicate rinderpest, IFPRI Discussion Paper 923