Eliminating Sheep and Goat Plague By 2030

By Jose Graziano da Silva,

Director-General, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO),

Bernard Vallat, Director-General, World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)

It is something extraordinary when a disease is eradicated from the face of the earth, as great a human accomplishment as inventing the internet or putting a man on the moon.

Two serious diseases have already been wiped out, and we would like to seize the momentum and launch a major effort to eradicate a third.

The two diseases that are gone are smallpox, a scourge of human history, and rinderpest, a chronic killer of cattle and instigator of famine. The disease we propose be made the third target for elimination is often deadly to sheep and goats but also devastating to the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers who rely on them for meat, milk, and other products for income generation.

Called by its French name peste des petits ruminants" (PPR), which means small ruminant plague, the disease can wipe out entire unvaccinated flocks in a matter of days. PPR is an ideal candidate for total eradication as there is only one virus strain for which an effective vaccine exists.

That is why the organizations we lead are jointly launching and leading a 15-year campaign to eradicate the disease, involving regions and countries.

By 2030 the world should be free of PPR.

Why target PPR?

Since it was first identified in 1942 in Cote d'Ivoire, the disease has spread throughout Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and most recently has swept across China. As a result, today PPR is present in more than 70 countries. If no action is taken now, the disease is expected to spread further into southern Africa, Southeast Asia, and Mongolia. Most countries in the Mediterranean basin are also at risk.

PPR does not affect human health directly, but it seriously jeopardizes the livelihoods of millions of poor smallholders. When their flocks die, farmers and their families in rural areas are pushed deeper into poverty, increasing their levels of malnutrition, and often they lose their livelihood.

Eradicating the rinderpest plague in cattle, an effort led by FAO and OIE and achieved in 2011, showed that with political will, economic commitment and the full involvement of veterinary services including practitioners, local shepherds, pastoralists, and farmers, countries can eradicate a disease completely that was not only devastating but entrenched across...