| Submit your comments on this article |
| Science & Technology |
| Rinderpest Disease On Verge Of World Eradication |
| 2009-12-04 |
| Rinderpest, the world's most devastating cattle disease, will be declared eradicated within 18 months, according to world health bodies. The effort will make it only the second disease to be wiped from the globe — the first was smallpox, eradicated in 1980. "Rinderpest tops the list of killer diseases [in animals]," says Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome. It not only kills cattle and other wildlife, it also causes famines when people in developing countries lose the beasts they need to plough their fields, he adds. Eradication of the disease would be a "massive achievement for the veterinary community", says Chris Oura, head of the Non-Vesicular Disease Reference Laboratory Group at the Institute for Animal Health in Pirbright, UK. Rinderpest, otherwise known as cattle plague, has killed many millions of cattle and other wildlife around the world since it first spread from Asia to Europe in the herds of the invading tribes, causing outbreaks during the Roman Empire in 376-386. Since then, the disease has spread throughout Europe and on to Africa, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. Outbreaks in Nigeria during the 1980s cost around $2 billion, according to the FAO. The disease is caused by a virus called a morbillivirus — a group that also includes the measles virus. Clinical signs include fever, discharges from the eyes and nose, diarrhoea and dehydration and the disease kills 80-90% of infected cattle in just 7-10 days. The last outbreak in Asia was in 2000 and the last known cases of the disease were in Kenya in 2001. The FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), based in Paris, headed up an international effort to eradicate the disease, which began in 1994 with the launch of the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme. The programme's success depended on widespread vaccination programmes and long-term monitoring of cattle and wildlife. A breakthrough in controlling the disease came in the 1980's when a heat-stable vaccine was developed that contained the attenuated virus, allowing the vaccine to be stored and transported over long distances. Rinderpest was a major factor in many wars in the past, especially in Africa. 3/4ths of the British cavalry horses sent there during the Boer War died soon after arrival, severely hampering their fight, whereas the Boer horses were mostly immune. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose |
| #2 Later in the war the Khakis acquired... locally bred mounts, formed into very effective anti-guerilla cavalry units. One that has been written about extensively was the Bushveldt Carbineers. The BVC as they were known were very effective in sweep operations, rounding up women and children, burning farms, that sort of thing. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-12-04 04:43 |
| #1 I guess there were no pagan witch doctors to tell the cattle that the injections would shrink their penises. |
| Posted by: gromky 2009-12-04 01:35 |