User:Bluerasberry/Eradication of rinderpest in India

The eradication of rinderpest in India is the disease eradication of rinderpest as one of the eradication of infectious diseases in India.

In 1999 there were 50 million calves born every year in India. To eliminate rinderpest, most of these the rest of the cattle would need rinderpest vaccination every year to have protection.

Northeast India and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were free of rinderpest in 1999, making them the the first regions free of the disease.

An 1871 report said that rinderpest was first recognized in Assam in 1722 and that by 1820, it was present everywhere in India.

Spread from India
In 1920 exporters brought cattle with rinderpest from India to Brazil. In Brazil, these cattle with India mixed with other cattle at the docks, spreading rinderpest. Next some cattle with rinderpest went to Belgium, and caused the last big outbreak of rinderpest among domestic cattle in that same year. The infection in Brazil was the only rinderpest outbreak ever in the New World.

During the Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War Indian soldiers stationed in Sri Lanka brought goats with them which had rinderpest. Genetic sequencing of the rinderpest in the outbreak in 1987 Sri Lanka outbreak determined that the virus originated in South India.