The Rinderpest Campaigns

Examines the struggle against rinderpest - a devastating cattle disease - and explores the history of international development.

Rinderpest and Peste des Petits Ruminants tells the story of how, by the year 2010, scientists are set to globally eradicate one of the great historic plagues that has ravaged human livestock for centuries. Descriptions of the disease in Europe date back to the 4th century and it was regularly re-introduced following wars and other civil unrest until late in the 19th century. It was introduced with devastating effect into Africa towards the end of the 19th century and is now widespread across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Southern Asia. Its causative agent, rinderpest virus, a morbillivirus very closely related to human measles virus, decimates the cattle population along with those of other susceptible domestic ruminants and many wildlife species wherever it is present. The history of Rinderpest including the history of vaccines and vaccination Details other Morbillaviruses Epidemiology and transmission of Rinderpest

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) declared in 2011 the global eradication of rinderpest and resolved to implement follow-up measures to maintain world freedom from the disease. Rinderpest is the only animal disease that has been globally eradicated. The greatest risk for rinderpest (RP) re-emergence is the release, whether intentional or unintentional, of infectious material from a Rinderpest Holding Facility (RHF) among susceptible animal populations. The re-emergence of disease would be a global animal health emergency, leading to the loss of global disease freedom and threatening livelihoods, food security, international trade and national economies. The Global Rinderpest Action Plan (GRAP) aims to ensure continued global freedom from rinderpest by outlining the actions necessary to prepare for, respond to and recover from a RP outbreak.

The increasing globalization of trade, travel and transport since the mid-19th century had unwelcome consequences – one of them was the spread of contagious animal diseases over greater distances in a shorter time than ever before. Borders and national control strategies proved to be insufficient to stop the pathogens. Not surprisingly, the issue of epizootics (epidemics of animals) was among the first topics to be addressed by international meetings from the 1860s onwards. Pathogens Crossing Borders explores the history of international efforts to contain and prevent the spread of animal diseases from the early 1860s to the years after the Second World War. As an innovative contribution to global history and the history of internationalism, the book investigates how disease experts, politicians and state authorities developed concepts, practices and institutional structures at the international level to tackle the spread of animal diseases across borders. By following their activities in dealing with a problem area which was – and is today – of enormous political, social, public health and economic relevance, the book reveals the historical challenges of finding common international responses to complex and pressing global issues for which there are no easy solutions.

LURKING in our homes, hospitals, schools, and farms is a terrifying pathogen that is evolving faster than the medical community can track it or drug developers can create antibiotics to quell it. That pathogen is MRSA—methicillin-resistant Staphyloccocus aureus—and Superbug is the first book to tell the story of its shocking spread and the alarming danger it poses to us all. Doctors long thought that MRSA was confined to hospitals and clinics, infecting almost exclusively those who were either already ill or old. But through remarkable reporting, including hundreds of interviews with the leading researchers and doctors tracking the deadly bacterium, acclaimed science journalist Maryn McKenna reveals the hidden history of MRSA’s relentless advance—how it has overwhelmed hospitals, assaulted families, and infiltrated agriculture and livestock, moving inexorably into the food chain. Taking readers into the medical centers where frustrated physicians must discard drug after drug as they struggle to keep patients alive, she discloses an explosion of cases that demonstrate how MRSA is growing more virulent, while evolving resistance to antibiotics with astonishing speed. It may infect us at any time, no matter how healthy we are; it is carried by a stunning number of our household pets; and it has been detected in food animals from cows to chickens to pigs. With the sensitivity of a novelist, McKenna portrays the emotional and financial devastation endured by MRSA’s victims, vividly describing the many stealthy ways in which the pathogen overtakes the body and the shock and grief of parents whose healthy children were felled by infection in just hours. Through dogged detective work, she discloses the unheard warnings that predicted the current crisis and lays bare the flaws that have allowed MRSA to rage out of control: misplaced government spending, inadequate public health surveillance, misguided agricultural practices, and vast overuse of the few precious drugs we have left. Empowering readers with the knowledge they need for self-defense, Superbug sounds an alarm: MRSA has evolved into a global emergency that touches almost every aspect of modern life. It is, as one deeply concerned researcher tells McKenna, "the biggest thing since AIDS."

Offers cutting-edge perspectives on how international development has shaped the global history of the modern world.

In view of the rapidly changing ecology of Africa ,this work provides benchmarks for some of the major, and more neglected, aspects, with an accent on historical data to enable habitats to be seen in relation to their previous state, forming a background reference work to understanding how the ecology of Africa has been shaped by its past. Reviewing historical data wherever possible it adopts an holistic view treating man as well as animals, with accent on diseases both human and animal which have been a potent force in shaping Africa’s ecology, a role neglected in ecological studies.