Info Trends 24

In only the second elimination of a disease in history, rinderpest a virus that used to kill cattle by the millions, leading to famine and death among humans has been declared wiped off the face of the earth.

Rinderpest, which means “cattle plague” in German, does not infect humans, though it belongs to the same viral family as measles. But for millenniums in Asia, Europe and Africa it wiped out cattle, water buffalo, yaks and other animals needed for meat, milk, plowing and cart-pulling.

Its mortality rate is about 80 percent higher even than smallpox, the only other disease ever eliminated.

The last case was seen in Kenya in 2001. On Thursday, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization announced that it was dropping its field surveillance efforts because it was convinced that the disease was gone. The official ceremony in which the World Organization for Animal Health will declare the world rinderpest free is scheduled for May.

“This has been a remarkable achievement for veterinary science, evidence of the commitment of numerous countries,” the Food and Agricultural Organization said in its statement.

Rinderpest is thought to have originated in Asia and spread through prehistoric cattle trading; it was in Egypt 5,000 years ago. It never became established in the Americas (though there was a small outbreak in Brazil 90 years ago), nor in Australia or New Zealand. Cattle infected with it would have started dying aboard ship and the herd would be slaughtered or quarantined on arrival.

But it reached Africa in the late 19th century, with devastating consequences. The near total destruction of herds meant widespread famines; in one of those, a third of the population of Ethiopia died, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization.

It also infected game animals, like giraffes and antelopes, but did not kill as many of them.

The global effort to eliminate rinderpest was officially begun in 1994. It relied on the vaccine and a network of field agents and laboratories that could hunt for and confirm outbreaks.

The virus that caused a worldwide outbreak in 2002 of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, was effectively contained by mid-2003. The last known case, caused by a lab accident, occurred in 2004, but SARS is not considered eliminated because it is assumed to persist in bats, wild civets and perhaps other animals, and could return.