Specialist Animal Health in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, yesterday agreed to try to rid the world of peste des petits ruminants (PPR), a viral disease of goats and sheep devastating herds throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Control efforts have fallen short. The time has come for a "next bold step," said José Graziano da Silva, director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, FAO organized the meeting with the Organization World animal health (OIE) to launch a global eradication program.
also known as PPR, PPR kills up to 0% of the animals it infects within days. The virus has spread rapidly over the past 15 years and is now present in 70 countries, with 80% of more than 2 billion of goat and sheep in the world at risk. FAO estimates that the disease causes more than $ 2 billion in losses annually and is an economic disaster for small farmers and poor rural households that depend on animals for milk, meat, wool and leather for both their own use and for trade.
The eradication plan envisages a phased approach. The evaluation phase requires determining the number and location of the most at-risk herds and strengthening veterinary capacity. Then control efforts based on voluntary vaccination should lead to an endgame in which the authorities could apply vaccination. The last step would be for countries to verify that there has been no case of PPR within their borders for at least 24 months. FAO and OIE estimate that they will need $ 4 billion to $ 7 billion over the next 15 years to achieve their goal.
There are a reliable PPR vaccine, although the organizations wish to see improvements to prolong its life in hot climates. They note that the strengthening of veterinary capacity would also benefit efforts to fight against other diseases, such as FMD, and improve overall animal health.
The Plan builds on the lessons of the eradication of rinderpest, a disease caused by a related virus that struck the livestock for millennia. After several attempts to control rinderpest failed, FAO launched a global eradication of rinderpest program in 1993 and declared the vanquished disease in 2011. This was the first time in history that an animal virus had been eradicated.
Paul Rossiter, a veterinarian British consultant who has participated in the campaign of rinderpest, PPR notes that stress starts with a number of advantages. Diagnostic and monitoring tools are not available in the early days of rinderpest program are now ready to go for use against PPR. These include tests for antibodies and to identify the different viral strains. But it also flags challenges in the field. Many local farmers and veterinarians are still unfamiliar with PPR, which can be confused with other infections. And the large number of sheep and goats, and the rapid replacement rates of animals, will complicate efforts to achieve sufficient levels of herd immunity to stop transmission of the virus. Thus Rossiter believes that a central challenge facing the eradication of PPR program will develop the largest and most imaginative immunization programs.
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