Rinderpest: at war with the disease of war.

Rinderpest, the legendary cattle plague, has caused devastating losses for centuries and remains the biggest threat to sustainable livestock production in developing countries. Strenuous efforts are now being made to achieve global eradication of this viral disease, a goal made feasible through the use of attenuated live vaccines developed in the 1950s. Their use almost resulted in eradication in the 1970s but left several foci of disease from where the plague then re-emerged.