Yahoo News 7 Jan 10;
PARIS (AFP) – A cattle disease that has been a curse for millennia is likely to be declared eradicated next year thanks to a global vaccination campaign, the world's paramount veterinary agency said on Thursday.
Rinderpest, also called cattle plague, can wipe out entire herds of cattle and buffalo, inflicting economic disaster and malnutrition in villages in poor countries.
But an arduous effort to vaccinate animals against the virus that causes the disease is bearing fruit, the head of the World Organisation for Animal Health, known by its French acronym of OIE, said in Paris.
"We are very close to wiping out rinderpest around the world," the OIE's director-general, Bernard Vallat, said, comparing the achievement in veterinary terms to the eradication of smallpox among humans.
"This disease has been a historic curse for humanity. It has been around since the dawn of time," Vallat said
In 2000, nearly half of the OIE's rollcall of 175 countries still had rinderpest, a tally that has fallen in 2010 to 17.
Assessments are underway for these remaining countries, of which Somalia is the most problematic, but hopes are high that the OIE will be able to declare the disease eradicated at a meeting in 2011, he said.
Vallat said a key question was where virus samples would be stored, to be used for research purposes and as a source for vaccines if the disease ever rebounded.
"Two or three" high-security reference laboratories are being considered, he said.
Samples of smallpox virus continue to be held in US and Russian labs, raising fears in some quarters that they could be stolen or used to make a bioterror weapon.
"Hopefully, it won't be the same for rinderpest," said Vallat.
The pathogen that causes rinderpest is a member of the paramyxoviridae family of virus.
Sheep and goats are susceptible to the virus but are much less affected by it compared to cattle. The symptoms among animals are fever, diarrhoea and dehydration, often leading to death within 10 to 15 days. There is no risk for humans.
