Scientists are declaring victory over a deadly animal disease that cattle herders around the world have dreaded for millennia.
Rinderpest becomes the second disease in all of human history to be successfully eradicated, after smallpox.
It played a role in the fall of Rome, the French Revolution and paved the way for the colonization of Africa, historians say. Where rinderpest struck, cattle death was swift and often total.
“If you could imagine that you are an owner of 100 animals - a milking herd - by the end of the week, you would have zero, it would go so fast through the population,” said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Animal Health Service Chief, Juan Lubroth.
