Rinderpest
A deadly viral disease of cattle, declared eradicated worldwide in 2011.
Also: cattle plague
Rinderpest, German for cattle plague, was one of the most feared animal diseases in history, a viral infection that could kill most of the cattle, yaks and buffalo it reached. Epidemics swept Europe repeatedly from the Middle Ages. When it entered Africa in the late 1880s it killed a very large share of the cattle and many wild animals, and brought famine to herding peoples from Ethiopia to South Africa. A long campaign of vaccination and surveillance, led by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organisation for Animal Health, ended it. In 2011 rinderpest was declared eradicated, only the second disease after smallpox to be wiped out.