Fight to End Rinderpest Is Declared a Success

01 November 2010

Cattle in Dertu, Kenya

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

In nineteen ninety-four, animal health experts started a worldwide campaign to end rinderpest. This disease is closely related to the measles virus but it does not infect people. Yet for thousands of years rinderpest has affected people by killing cattle and other animals and causing starvation.

The last known outbreak of rinderpest took place in Kenya in two thousand one.

Now the World Organization for Animal Health is declaring victory against this much-feared sickness. Official confirmation is not expected until May, when the organization will have reports from the last few countries.

But the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has announced it is ending field operations against riderpest. Jacques Diouf is head of the FAO.

JACQUES DIOUF: "Rinderpest affected Africa, Asia and Europe for millennia and caused widespread famine and decimated millions of animals, both domestic and wild."

Experts believe rinderpest first came from Asia. The name means "cattle plague" in German. The disease was common in Europe until the nineteenth century.

In Africa in the eighteen hundreds, rinderpest killed eight out of ten infected cattle. Whole herds died, leaving people without meat or milk and damaging economies.