An End to Cattle Plague: Laboratory Capacity Building to Support the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established in 1957 as the world's 'Atoms for Peace' organization within the United Nations system. It currently has 151 Member States (March 2011) and works with partners worldwide to ensure the peaceful, safe and secure use of nuclear technologies. In 1964, IAEA and FAO established the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, to help countries apply nuclear science and related technologies for sustainable agricultural development. Through the concerted efforts of IAEA's Department of Technical Cooperation, the Joint FAO/IAEA Division and cooperation with FAO, IAEA helps Member States to develop sustainable capacities in nuclear science and related technologies, including by providing the training and analytical laboratory services necessary for the efficient and safe use of these technologies. Building on this experience, about 25 years ago, IAEA started to collaborate with FAO, OIE, OAU (now AU) and other regional organizations in Africa and Asia to support initernational efforts to diagnose, control and eradicate rinderpest. For centuries, rinderpest was one of the most dreaded livestock diseases. Its devastating effect on European cattle populations in the eighteenth century resulted in the first veterinary school, established in 1761 in France to educate veterinarians on the control of rinderpest and other animal diseases. Some 250 years later, the veterinary profession is set to declare the global eradication of rinderpest. During the nineteenth century, the application of quarantines helped keep rinderpest at bay, resulting in its eradication in Europe. In parallel with this, the development of vaccination strategies enabled containment of the disease in other regions, but it took until the early twentieth century to develop a standardized goat-adapted rinderpest vaccine. This vaccine was widely used for the control of rinderpest in Asia and Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, until it was replaced by the tissue culture-adapted vaccine, which was both more efficient and easier to produce.