The planet is rid of rinderpest, a devastating livestock disease targeted for eradication in the mid-1990s.

“This is the first animal disease virus that’s been eradicated through a vaccination campaign,” and only the second viral disease, after smallpox, to have been wiped from the earth, says Chris Oura, a veterinary scientist at the Institute for Animal Health in Pirbright, UK who was involved in the effort. “It is a major achievement.”

Officials at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) made the news official today in Rome, ending a 16-year battle to eradicate rinderpest. Nature chronicled this effort last year.

The centuries-old disease, also known as cattle plague, kills 80-90% of infected livestock and caused untold economics damage, Oura says. For instance, a 19th century outbreak decimated cattle populations in the Horn of Africa, while a 1980s outbreak in Nigeria cost an estimated £2 billion.

An effective vaccine against the virus has been around since the 1950s, but it was not applied in the concerted manner needed to stamp out the disease, Oura says. “It was clear that although the vaccine was being used, it wasn’t being used efficiently.”

Better field diagnostics and improvements in the vaccine that made it last longer in tough environments made possible the launch of an eradication campaign in 1994, led by the FAO and the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris.

The last known outbreak occurred in Kenya in 2001, and the final remaining pockets of the disease were probably cleared from Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Ethopia and Kenya by 2007.

“Once animals were vaccinated across all the effected countries, the work really began, because that’s when you had to prove that it wasn’t there anymore,” Oura says. Tests cannot differentiate an infected animal from a vaccinated one, so officials ceased vaccination to conclusively prove that the virus was gone.

Oura thinks the rinderpest eradication campaign could serve as a model for eliminating other veterinary diseases, particularly a closely related virus affecting goats and sheep called peste de petits ruminants (PPR).

“PPR is spreading very rapidly across Africa and Asia, and this could be eradicated using exactly the same model as rinderpest. The vaccine is there; the tools are there,” he says.

Image: Cells infected with the virus that causes rinderpest. Courtesy of AJC1 via Flickr under Creative Commons