Title:
Fight to End Rinderpest Is Declared a Success
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
In nineteen ninety-four, animal health experts
started a worldwide campaign to end rinderpest. This
disease is closely related to the measles virus but
it does not infect people. Yet for thousands of
years rinderpest has affected people by killing
cattle and other animals and causing starvation. The
last known outbreak of rinderpest took place in
Kenya in two thousand one. Now the World
Organization for Animal Health is declaring victory
against this much-feared sickness. Official
confirmation is not expected until May, when the
organization will have reports from the last few
countries.But the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization has announced it is ending
field operations against rinderpest. Jacques Diouf
is head of the FAO. He said rinderpest affected
Africa, Asia and Europe for thousands of years,
caused widespread famine and killed millions of
animals, both domestic and wild.Experts believe
rinderpest first came from Asia. The name means
"cattle plague" in German. The disease was common in
Europe until the nineteenth century. In Africa in
the eighteen hundreds, rinderpest killed eight out
of ten infected cattle. Whole herds died, leaving
people without meat or milk and damaging
economies.Rinderpest can spread quickly through the
air and in water containing waste from animals with
the virus. The disease was deadly in eighty to
ninety percent of cases. It mainly sickened cattle
and buffalo, but also other animals including
giraffes, yaks and antelope. Some areas of the world
escaped rinderpest. This was probably because of
careful efforts to prevent the import of sick
animals. In nineteen ninety-nine, Walter Plowright
won the World Food Prize as a hero of the fight
against rinderpest. The British researcher fought
the disease in Africa in the nineteen fifties and
sixties. He led the development of a vaccine called
TCRV. A single dose of it could protect animals
against rinderpest. Food production increased.Now,
rinderpest expert John Anderson calls the end of the
disease "the biggest achievement in veterinary
history." Officials say they must still decide where
to keep some of the virus and infected tissue for
future research. Rinderpest is only the second
disease ever declared to have been eliminated. The
other disease is smallpox.For VOA Special English
I'm Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
