Epidemiological data point towards the continued circulation of rinderpest in Pakistan. Rinderpest was detected on three occasions on intra-urban dairy farms in Karachi during the year 2000. These were the first confirmed outbreaks in Pakistan since the 1997 outbreaks in Punjab and indicate that the rinderpest virus has circulated in Pakistan, despite an absence of disease detections for almost three years. Analysis of the situation suggested that a suboptimal rate of routine vaccination was masking the presence of disease without achieving eradication. The vaccination programme appeared to suppress epidemics, thus leading to few formal complaints. The federal and provincial veterinary services of Pakistan, in partnership with FAO, have reviewed the situation and decided to shift away from institutionalized vaccination to a strategy of focused vaccination in response to epidemiological intelligence.
Buffalo market in North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan
PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER ROEDER, EMPRES
Pakistan has been working to strengthen disease reporting and introduce active disease surveillance measures with the assistance of an FAO TCP project (TCP/PAK/8923: Epidemiological analysis of rinderpest and development of an eradication strategy). The objective of the project is to identify how rinderpest has escaped detection and to set the stage for full eradication. Assistance from FAO will continue in the form of a Trust Fund project funded by the European Community (GCP/PAK/088/EC: Support for emergency prevention and control of main transboundary animal diseases in Pakistan) signed in July 2001.
Initial active surveillance brought to light unreported rinderpest events in the interior of Sindh Province. FAO fielded a consultant in participatory epidemiology, Dr Jeff Mariner, who supported actions to develop further the database on the epidemiology of rinderpest. The objectives were to identify the extent and underlying mechanisms of rinderpest persistence at both the epidemiologic and socio-economic levels.
First-hand reports from livestock owners of their encounters with rinderpest indicate that the disease has been routinely circulating among smallholder farms in the rural areas of Sindh. The spatial pattern of disease reports was consistent with the pattern of vaccination in recent years. Both farmers and veterinarians believe that rinderpest originates from the Karachi dairy industry, yet this assertion has proved difficult to verify. The difficulty lies primarily in the process of triangulation. Despite a concerted drive on participatory disease searching in Karachi, there are only a few specific reports of disease occurrence from the city's commercial dairy industry.
Plans are being made to define the strategy for the final eradication thrust. Active and passive surveillance activities will be structured so that adequate attention is paid to the high-risk farms. Ultimately, eradication will require focused vaccination initiatives that involve the high-risk segments of the population in effective immunization activities.