29.06.2011

Dr John Anderson, former Head of the Institute for Animal Health’s (IAH) Pirbright Laboratory, was awarded a medal and certificate by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) for his personal contributions to the eradication of rinderpest, cattle plague. A medal was also awarded to the IAH for its decades of commitment to the fight against this disease. The Institute is the FAO and OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) Reference Laboratory for Rinderpest, which was headed by Dr Anderson.

The awards were made on Monday (27th June) at FAO headquarters in Rome by FAO Director General Jacques Diouf who also unveiled a plaque which commemorates the exemplary work and collaboration of professionals, technical and financial institutions and member states in the eradication effort. A declaration of global freedom from rinderpest was adopted by FAO yesterday (28th June). Dr Diouf described rinderpest as “one of history’s deadliest animal diseases and long time threat to human livelihoods and food security.”

In the 1980s and 90s Dr Anderson MBE and IAH colleagues developed robust novel diagnostic tests for detecting antibodies to rinderpest virus and for detecting the virus itself. Under John’s guidance IAH performed many thousands of tests for rinderpest, trained overseas diagnosticians at IAH Pirbright, and established diagnostic centres in Africa and Asia. Accurate detection of infection and continued surveillance based on the laboratory tests were integral to the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme initiated by FAO and OIE in 1994. The tests were performed in their thousands alongside a vaccination programme, which was ultimately successful. The continual active surveillance programme for rinderpest was officially ended in 2010, as no rinderpest virus or evidence of spread had been detected since 2001.

In the 1990s the late Professor Tom Barrett of IAH introduced genetic fingerprinting into the fight against rinderpest virus. The genetic fingerprint of a given strain of virus enabled its relationship with other strains to be established, providing evidence to identify the source of the virus in an outbreak, and the likely means by which the disease arrived to a region. A number of other notable scientists who contributed to the demise of rinderpest also worked within the IAH.