Abstract
Rinderpest is a contagious viral disease of domestic (mainly cattle and water buffalo) and wild animals (ex. warthog, giraffe, African buffalo) which can kill over 95% of susceptible animals. At the time of the Meiji era in Japan, rinderpest was rampant. But we successfully eradicated the disease from Japan. After the completion of human smallpox eradiation program in the 20th century, rinderpest was chosen as the 1st animal disease to be eradicated. The Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme introduced performance indicators for the monitoring of rinderpest surveillance activities at the national level. One indicator is a number of stomatitis-enteritis outbreaks reported. Participatory disease search is useful for detecting as many stomatitis-enteritis outbreaks as possible. In areas with high risk of rinderpest, farmers have existing veterinary knowledge which helps increasing sensitivity of the surveillance. Therefore, participatory techniques are integrated as complementary tool into conventional forms of epidemiology. In this presentation, I would like to introduce an application of participatory epidemiology in the rinderpest eradication project in Africa.
