A triumph for veterinary medicine

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

According to the Washington Post, veterinary epidemiologists announced in late May that rinderpest had been eradicated, describing it as "probably the greatest achievement in veterinary medicine."

The bovine equivalent of measles, with an 80 per cent fatality rate, has caused great grief to humans in Europe, Asia and Africa, from ancient China to as recently as a decade ago. One third of the population of Ethiopia, mostly herdsman, starved when it entered that country in 1889.

In earlier times, it crippled agricultural communities by killing draft animals. The most recently recorded outbreak was in Kenya in 2001.

Eradication was made possible by a vaccine developed in the 1960s that didn't require refrigeration. It helped that the disease tended to kill hoofed wild animals that would otherwise spread it.

Rinderpest has never been found in North America. An outbreak in Brazil was contained in 1921, as was another one in Australia a few years later. BF