timeline

  • 10,000 BCE

    Until recently it was assumed the disease existed as long ago as 10000 B.C. when cattle were domesticated in the Indus valley in what is now Pakistan

  • In 1713 when it threanted the papal herds Pope clement XI asked his personal physician Dr. Giovanni Maria Lancisi to stop it

  • Despite its proximity to Eurasia Africa was spared until 1887 when the Italian Army struggling to conquer Abyssinia imported Indian cattle for food and draft power

  • An 1893 version made from the bile of convalescent animals was replaced by vaccines grown in goats and rabbits and finally in laboratory cell lines a heat-stable version was devolped in the 1980s

  • The modern eradication campaign began 1945 when the Food and Agriculture organization was founded

  • But other diseases have overlapping symptoms and a rapid diagnostic test that could be used next to a dying animal was not developed until the 1990s

  • The last known case was in a wild buffalo tested in mount muru national park in Kenya on 2001