What does it take to wipe a scourge off the face of the Earth? A massive global push to hunt down and eradicate the last few stubborn pockets of disease - whether the problem is in people or cattle.rnWorld health bodies say that within 18 months they will celebrate the eradication of rinderpest, the worlds most devastating cattle disease. It would become only the second disease that humans have wiped from the globe - after smallpox, which was declared vanquished in 1980 - and will mark a "massive achievement for the veterinary community", says Chris Oura, head of the Non-Vesicular Disease Reference Laboratory Group at the Institute for Animal Health in Pirbright, UK.rn"Rinderpest tops the list of killer [animal] diseases," says Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome. Just as smallpox ripped through human populations for centuries, so too has rinderpest drastically reduced animal populations.
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