Rinderpest, an animal disease that plagued livestock and their human keepers across Eurasia and Africa for millennia, may be on the verge of joining smallpox as the only viral diseases to have been eradicated in human history.

The virus never became established in the western hemisphere. In the 1920s, Europe eradicated it by controlling animal movements and slaughtering infected animals. Worldwide control became a priority of the fledgling United Nations’ agricultural efforts in 1945. A vaccine grown in goats became available in the 1950s. And in the 1960s, a live attenuated vaccine became widely used in rinderpest-eradication efforts. A global campaign established in the early 1990s did much to control the spread of the virus and “reinfection” between Arabia and India through livestock export.

Sri Lanka and Iran reported their last outbreaks in 1994, India in 1995, Iraq in 1996, Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1997, and Pakistan in 2000. In Africa, the virus was last detected in 2001 in wild buffaloes in Meru National Park in Kenya, which lies on the edge of the Somali ecosystem. This may be the last remaining reservoir of the virus. And pending confirmation it may finally be eradicated.

One small step for… well, certainly one giant leap in shrinking the gap.

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