The Beginning

The German "Rinderpest" is the English euphemism for the murrain known

as cattle plague. The name hides the desolation wrought by a disease that

ravaged cattle herds domesticated in Asia 8-9000 years ago. The English

name "steppe murrain" reflects the belief in Europe that its homeland was

the steppes between Europe and Asia from where waves of rinderpest swept

west to the Atlantic and east to the Pacific in the retinues of maurading

Asian armies.
 
 

The secret weapons of the invaders were Grey Steppe oxen. Their value

was a strong innate resistance manifested by slow spread of virus

and by the absence of clinical signs. A troop of Grey Steppe cattle

could shed rinderpest virus for months provoking epidemics that

devastated buffalo and cattle populations of the invaded countries. The

sequelae were no transport, untilled fields, starving peasants, and

overthrown governments.
 
 

Then the Enlightenment

Rural Europe was laid waste constantly until the 18^th century when the

number of deaths in the Papal herds so alarmed Pope Clement XI that

he instructed his physician, Dr. Lancisi, to prescribe measures for the

suppression of the plague. Lancisi concluded that it was " Bovilla

peste" and recognized that it was a contagion. His recommendations for

for its containment are still valid. The penalties for transgressors were
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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drastic ; guilty laymen were hung, drawn and quartered and guilty

ecclesiastics were sent to the galleys. The edicts were not popular but their

application rid Romagna of rinderpest. Elsewhere in Europe rinderpest was

endemic being fanned frequently into point epidemics by a continuum of

wars.
 
 

The pandemic hit England in 1714 in cattle shipped from the Netherlands.

Thomas Bates surgeon to King George I, was commanded by the Lord

Justices to ascertain the plague’ s nature and to effect its control. Bates

was familiar with Lancisi’s edicts having been stationed as a naval surgeon

in Sicily. He applied them without the draconian penalties introducing

instead a policy of indemnities. Bates’s campaign eradicated the disease

within three months to the astonishment of continental countries where the

ravages continued unabated.

Rinderpest re - entered England in 1745 in trade stock from the Netherlands.

Bates’s was still alive but memories are short and his methods and irate

epistles were ignored. The Privy Council in 1749 admitted their failure to

control the disease which burnt itself out having killed half - a - million

cattle.
 
 

Veterinary Schools Founded

The massive losses of cattle in France the Comptroller General of Finances

to found a veterinary school to train a cadre to control animal diseases.

The school, the world’s first, opened in 1762 in Lyons and within a year

the trainees were applying Lancisi’s principles. Within 16 years most

European countries followed suit. Only England held back.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Steam - Power

The seminal event of the 19^th century was of steam power that enabled the

shipment of live cattle by rail and sea in numbers previously impossible.

The sequel was inevitable: in 1857 to 1866 Europe was denuded of cattle.
 
 

Britain did not escape. The Cattle Plague of 1865 - 67 was a national

disaster. The virus came with the first trainload of Asiatic cattle to reach

the Baltic port of Revel from where they were shipped to Hull in the

steamship "Tonning". Within weeks the disease was out of control. No one

in the Privy Council thought to check their archives as to what happened

in the previous century. Stockowners wanted cures but the failure of

medical cures changed the climate of public opinion and a "stamping out"

policy was introduced that eradicated rinderpest within months.
 
 

The epidemic led to the establishment of a State Veterinary Service in 1865

albeit it was 200 hundred years behind mainland Europe. The Veterinary

Service was tested twice in the 1870s when infected cattle were shipped

from Hamburg. They contained both outbreaks within weeks. Since then

the British Isles have been free of rinderpest.
 
 

Imperial Ambitions

In the 19^th century Europeans were empire building in the tropics. They

appeased conquered stockowners by having veterinary departments

establishing veterinary departments to curb losses. For example, when the

British government took firm control of India they recalled Col. J. H. B.

Hallen, the Principal of the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College, to lead the
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

4.
 
 

Commissioners appointed by the Viceroy to Inquire the Origin, Nature, Etc.,

of Indian Cattle Plague. They identified Indian murrain as being the same

as European rinderpest and estimated that the annual loss was in hundreds

of thousands. They recommended a law be enacted for the prevention of

spread of murrain, and considered a veterinary school to be essential.

There was no mention of Bates’s eradication methods.
 
 

The Netherlands and the U.S.A. respectively colonized Indonesia and the

Philippines in the 1870s and 1880s and in the process introduced

rinderpest from mainland Asia. The epidemics were savage causing up to

90% losses. Both invading adminstrations were quick to establish veterinary

departments yet both took 30 years eliminate the disease.
 
 

The pandemic that changed the fauna of Africa entered the continent in

1887 at Massawa with Indian cattle for the Italian army. The cattle were

infected and the disease swept from the Horn of Africa west to the Atlantic

and south to the Cape of Good Hope. The Ethiopians lost 95% of their

cattle and most of the human population starved to death. F. D. Lugard

witnessed its passage through Maasailand in 1890 and he stresseded that

no similar animal epidemic had visited Africa within human memory. In

London he pleaded for a vet to be sent to East Africa to report on the

nature of the plague and its remedies.

By 1896 large numbers of cattle and wild ruminants were dying on both

banks of the Zambesi River. Within two weeks most of the cattle around

Salisbury were dead. The plague was diagnosed as rinderpest by a Dick
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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graduate who was the telegraphist in Bulawayo. He wired the Colonial

Veterinary Officer in Cape Colony who alerted states in southern Africa.

Chaos ensued ! At the end of March the disease entered the South African

Republic and moved on remorselessly into Cape Colony and German

Southwest Africa in 1897. All attempts to stop the plague by Proclamations,

Days of Prayer, fences and slaughter of sick animals failed. Novel

prophylactic measures were tried and were found to be wanting. The

disease burnt itself out in 1905 but it lingered on in Equatorial Africa.

Africa and flared up in Kenya in 1907.
 
 

In the late 1980s the Indian Government offered a " peace accord" to Sri

Lanka whereby India undertook to station an Indian Peace Keeping Military

Force ( IPKF ) in Sri Lanka to assist the Lankan authorities to subdue a

Tamil Insurrection. The IPKF was provisioned from India and the supplies

included live goats some of which were visibly sick. Shortly, thereafter,

rinderpest was diagnosed in local cattle. It was not until 1999 that Sri

Lanka could declare provisional freedom from rinderpest.

Vaccine Development

Ever since Professor B. Ramazzini attempted to protect cattle from rinderpest

in 1711 using infected setons murrain investigators have developed new

prophylactic methods. One was J. T. Edwards who in the 1920s fortuitously

the 1920s fortuitously modified rinderpest virus by passaging it serially in

goats. The line stabilized after 600 passages and proved to be attenuated

for Indian cattle. Moreover, the virus immunized for life. THIS FINDING

WAS THE BREAK - THROUGH IN THE BATTLE TO CONTROL RINDERPEST.

Freeze - drying gave a powdered vaccine with a prolonged shelf - life.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

6.
 
 

Caprinized vaccine was not ideal. In animals with a low innate resistance it

induced clinical signs and occasionally killed when a latent infection was

exacerbated. Even animals with a high innate resistance shed tears; a sign

welcomed by pastoralists.
 
 

As the fear of rinderpest declined the demand for a safer attenuated vaccine

arose. The problem was solved when W. Plowright and R. D. Ferris grew

the virus in cultures of calf kidney cells. By the 90^th serial passage the

virus was stable, attenuated, and non - infectious. The vaccine was cheap

to produce and easy to assay for potency and safety. It quickly became the

vaccine of choice. Recently J. Mariner increased the shelf - life to 30 days

at 30⁰C by adapting it to Vero cells.
 
 

In the past decade recombinant rinderpest vaccines have been developed in

Britain, Japan and the U.S.A. but they have not been cleared for use.

Their virtue is that the handling of infectious rinderpest virus is totally

avoided. Regular routine vaccinations have been stopped in all countries

except where a focal pocket is contained and eradicated by movement

controls and mass vaccination. Plowright’s vaccine is the one that is used

because it protects within 3 days through interference whereas recombinant

vaccines need a 3 week advantage.
 

Control Strategies
 

In the 1950s the strategy was mass vaccination in your own country to

cut the incidence of the disease. For example, the All - India Vaccination

Programme was launched in 1956 when the incidence was 60,002. In 1975
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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the incidence was to 2,824. An unexpected high incidence occurred in 1981

provoking an emergency meeting to assess progress. The strategy was

changed, fresh funds were obtained, and vaccination was concentrated to

high incidence States. Twelve years later India was declared provisionally

free of rinderpest in 1995.
 
 

The Interafrican Bureau of Epizootic Diseases was founded in 1950 under

the directorship of W. G. Beaton. He, from the beginning, planned to

eradicate rinderpest from Africa. Heads of African Veterinary Services met

in Kano in 1960 and welcomed Beaton’s proposals to launch a

multinational joint project (JP 15) under the aegis of the Organization of

African Unity. The aim was to vaccinate all cattle of all ages in each

phase every year for three successive years. Thereafter, each country

undertook to vaccinate all calves and weaners annually. At the start 17

countries had rinderpest and at the end only two reported the disease.
 
 

A hidden focus erupted on the Niger River sudd and spread east along the

Sahel. Another focus flared up in Sudan and spread west. Two million

Fulani cattle sickened and half - a - million died in Nigeria. A dreadful sequel

was the high suicide rate among Fulani headmen. The Sudan outbreak also

invaded Uganda and was taken to Tanzania in cattle acquired by returning

soldiers. Tragically the virus spread to wildlife.
 
 

The pandemic was so widespread and virulent that Heads of State pressed

O.A.U. to to organise a fresh campaign. The Panafrican Rinderpest

Campaign began operations in 1987 in 34 African countries. In the 1990s
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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most Equatorial countries were declared provisionally free. Small foci

persisted in war - torn Sudan and Somalia. The latter focus spilled over into

Kenya and Tanzania causing havoc in wildlife BUT not in cattle. The virus

was recovered from a single bovine gum erosion and proved to be an old

African strain virulent for wildlife but non - fatal for cattle. A FAO Empress

Project vaccinated all cattle in northern Tanzania and re - vaccinated them

three months later. Surveillance checks confirmed that the disease was

eradicated.
 
 

Global Eradication

FAO organized a meeting in 1987 to discuss the feasibility of global

rinderpest eradication. The sequel was the establishment of GREP ( Global

Rinderpest Eradication Programme) backed by FAO, OIE, and IAEA because

they believe the goal is achievable in the foreseeable future.
 
 

G.R.S.

30/11/99

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