This is good news for the buffalo and antelopes of Africa.

Rinderpest is declared eradicated

Paris - World farm monitors on Wednesday declared a cattle-killing virus that has been a curse through the ages had been wiped out, the first time an animal disease has been eradicated in human history.

To prolonged applause from delegates, the global watchdog for farm-animal trade approved a report certifying that the last 14 countries of the world were free of rinderpest, also called cattle plague.

Highly contagious and often fatal among bovine species but not infectious for humans, the rinderpest virus has a destructive history going back two thousand years.

The disease probably originated in the steppes of Central Asia before cutting through Europe, Asia and Africa, helped by trade.

It has ruined livestock farmers and unleashed famines that in turn have fuelled turbulence and war.

Stamping it out, a quest that can be traced back to 1920, brought together the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and national veterinary agencies.

Their prime weapons have been vaccines as well as routine surveillance, in which outbreaks are swiftly spotted by veterinarians and then circumscribed.

"It's a historic moment," said Bernard Vallat, director-general of the OIE, the Paris-based agency which oversees veterinary health among international trade in farm animals.

Virus no longer circulates

"The world is free of rinderpest, its virus no longer circulates among animals," he told a press conference. "...A sword of Damocles that has been hanging over all our heads has now been lifted".

Ann Tutwiler, deputy director general of the FAO, said eradication massively boosted the fight against hunger and malnutrition, a problem expected to worsen through population growth and climate change.

"We have a tremendous success that we can count today. It's a success that's born of co-operation, collaboration and partnership and most particularly knowledge," she said.

Rinderpest afflicts cattle, yaks, wildebeest and buffaloes but can also cause milder symptoms in cloven-footed animals, including sheep and goats. Animals become feverish, develop lesions in the mouth, diarrhoea and dehydration.

The disease has been blamed for devastating losses, borne especially by small farmers who may see their entire herd wiped out, although its impacts have also gone far beyond agriculture.

"Rinderpest epidemics and resulting losses preceded the fall of the Roman empire, the conquest of Christian Europe by Charlemagne and the impoverishment of Russia," the FAO said.

"When rinderpest was introduced into sub-Saharan Africa, at the end of the 19th century, it triggered extensive famines and opened the way for the colonisation of Africa."

Asked to describe the achievement, veterinarians compared rinderpest eradication with that of smallpox, which was declared in 1979 to have been stamped out through a global vaccination campaign.

Samples destroyed

The OIE assembly agreed that remaining samples of the virus should be collected and destroyed except for a small number that should be kept in special labs under high security, to avoid accidental release or use in bioterrorism.

Guidelines for determining how this should be done, and which labs should be approved, will be hammered out in the coming months in meetings between OIE and FAO experts, the OIE said.

The future of the last stocks of smallpox virus, officially held in US and Russian labs, divided the World Health Organisation (WHO) at its assembly on Tuesday. Negotiations on the issue have been postponed for three years.

The last 14 countries to be declared free of the disease were Azerbaijan, the Bahamas, the Comores, Federated States of Micronesia, Gambia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Sao Tome, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emiraes.

The FAO will hold its own ceremonies in Rome next month, attended by agriculture ministers and some heads of state, to celebrate the breakthrough, Tutwiler said.

In KZN all vehicles carrying livestock have to go thru quarantine checkpoints, and the vehicles entering the game ranch had the treads of their tires sprayed down with something to kill something or other. What was this about?

Also a question about the tsetse fly. I'm just reading the book "A Man Called Lion" by Capstick and he mentions that the tsetse fly is the greatest friend to wildlife ever and that professional hunters won't even swat one. Why is that?

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Also a question about the tsetse fly. I'm just reading the book "A Man Called Lion" by Capstick and he mentions that the tsetse fly is the greatest friend to wildlife ever and that professional hunters won't even swat one. Why is that?

Cause without the tsetse...large African game would have been wiped out scores ago. The tsetse carries trypanosomes...the agent of African Sleeping Sickness...a killer of domestic animals...especially cattle and horses.

The tsetse single-handedly set aside game preserves...cause nothing else could live there. to the tsetse fly!!!

Nagana disease genes found

London - Scientists studying the tsetse fly-borne disease "sleeping sickness" and a devastating version found in cattle say they have found two genes that may in future help rescue the livelihoods of millions of farmers in Africa.

In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal on Monday, the researchers said the genes should help cattle breeders identify animals that can resist the disease, as well as shedding more light on the human form, "African sleeping sickness", caused by the same parasite.

The World Health Organisation estimates that around 30 000 Africans a year get sleeping sickness, although numbers have fallen sharply in the past decade due to better control measures.

It is found in 36 sub-Saharan African nations and is caused by the trypanosome parasite which is transmitted by tsetse fly bites.

Although the parasite is best known for sleeping sickness, which in its advanced stages causes sleep disturbance and can be fatal if left untreated, experts say its highest toll in terms of human welfare is from sick, wasting cattle and farming productivity losses.

The annual economic impact of African animal trypanosomiasis, known locally as "nagana", a Zulu word meaning "to be depressed", has been estimated at $4 to $5 billion.

"The two genes discovered in this research could provide a way for cattle breeders to identify the animals that are best at resisting disease," said Steve Kemp, a geneticist working on the study at both the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the University of Liverpool.

The study was led by scientists from ILRI and from Britain's Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh universities, and also involved other researchers in Britain, Ireland and South Korea.

The researchers said they drew on the fact that while the humped cattle breeds characteristic of much of Africa are susceptible to disease-causing trypanosome parasites, a humpless West African breed called the N'Dama is not seriously affected.

Valued animal

This makes N'Dama a valued animal in Africa's endemic regions, although the breed tends to be smaller, produce less milk, and be less docile than its bigger, humped cousins, they said.

The scientists used a range of genetic approaches, including analysing differences in genetic activity in the tissues of the two cattle breeds after animals were experimentally infected with the parasites. They also analysed the genetics of cattle populations from all over Africa.

The vast amounts of data collected were brought together with powerful new analytical tools.

"Combined, the data were like a Venn diagram overlaying different sets of evidence [and] it was the overlap that interested us," Kemp said in a statement about the work.

The scientists said that with this new knowledge, breeders could screen African cattle to find animals with more disease resistance and seek to combine this genetic trait with other important traits like high productivity and drought tolerance.

If further research confirms the significance of the genes in disease resistance, a breeding programme could develop a small breeding herd of disease-resistant cattle in the next 10 to 15 years, the scientists said, and this could then be used over the next decades to breed animals for African regions.

Using genetic engineering to achieve the same disease-resistant breeding herd - an approach still in its early days - may be done in four or five years, Kemp said.

- Reuters

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Originally posted by postoak:
In KZN all vehicles carrying livestock have to go thru quarantine checkpoints, and the vehicles entering the game ranch had the treads of their tires sprayed down with something to kill something or other. What was this about?
FOOT AND MOUTH, a disease that originated in Texas about twenty-five years ago.

Also a question about the tsetse fly. I'm just reading the book "A Man Called Lion" by Capstick and he mentions that the tsetse fly is the greatest friend to wildlife ever and that professional hunters won't even swat one. Why is that?

Tsetse fly, no domestic livestock, no farmers and few humans.

We need to develop DNA resistant Tsetse flies.

No disease is ever truly wiped out.

quote:

Also a question about the tsetse fly. I'm just reading the book "A Man Called Lion" by Capstick and he mentions that the tsetse fly is the greatest friend to wildlife ever and that professional hunters won't even swat one. Why is that?

The day will come when this natural barrier is removed and with it the inevitable unintended consequences will come to bear...One of which will be the proliferation of unchecked grazing - ergo the end of the last great "wild Places" where only the strong survive!

God save the Tetse!!!

Jeff,

You are exactly right. In a sickening twist of the concept of unintended consequences, a bunch of Western scientists, on a mission to eliminate sleeping sickness, will singlehandedly destroy what is left of the wildlife of Africa.

I'm always a little leary about declaring a disease "wiped out" A disease like Rinderpest can easily fall below the level of detection. Particularly in a place like Africa
I'm still not convinced smallpox is really "gone". Somplace in Somalia or Ethiopia it may be sitting in a reservoir just waitinfg for a new host to come along.

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Jeff,

You are exactly right. In a sickening twist of the concept of unintended consequences, a bunch of Western scientists, on a mission to eliminate sleeping sickness, will singlehandedly destroy what is left of the wildlife of Africa.

Cheers,

~ Alan

Ahhh, the voice of logic!...Same will happen when Malaria is conquered, but in this case it will be the humans that will suffer immeasureably...Overpopulation to the extreme!

Wait and see...

JW