In the shadow of rinderpest
For 30 years, PPR was associated with West Africa. However, in 1972 a disease affecting goats in Sudan that was first diagnosed as rinderpest proved to be PPR, revealing a geographic distribution beyond the area initially assumed. Today, PPR is enzootic in most countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Its presence in North Africa and Turkey puts the disease at the doors of Europe.
Fundamental :
PPR has become a transboundary disease. Although a highly effective vaccine has been available for 25 years, PPR continues to spread and expose previously disease-free countries in the South and North to the risk of virus incursion and disease emergence.
The extensive geographic reach of PPR is in part due to intensified trade and the movements of animals, whose populations are growing. However, scientists today know that PPR is not a new disease and that it has been present in West Africa since the end of the 19th century, well before it was first described. It was simply impossible to distinguish PPR from other diseases with similar clinical signs such as rinderpest.
It is now acknowledged that the rinderpest cases among small ruminants in Senegal in 1871 and in Guinea in 1927 likely were actually outbreaks of PPR. The same is true of India, where the first PPR epizootic was officially recognized in 1987, yet a disease affecting goats and sheep resembling rinderpest reported in 1940 and 1942 probably was PPR.
the absence of powerful diagnostic tests,
and a low level of interest in small ruminants' health,
long obscured the presence of PPR and delayed its identification.
