The cost of eliminating Rinderpest

I was still looking for an estimate of the total cost of Rinderpest elimination when I came across this Science article: RINDERPEST: Driven to Extinction from last year, which provided just the estimate I was looking for:

It's impossible to tease out exactly what had been spent in the fight against rinderpest, but Roeder estimates that since 1986, international donors and participating countries spent approximately $610 million on animal health in Africa and Asia, primarily targeting rinderpest but covering other diseases and infrastructure. One FAO estimate puts the benefits of rinderpest eradication at $1 billion annually in Africa alone. The additional $10 million or $12 million needed for the remaining countries to complete the accreditation process "would be a small price to pay for finalizing the eradication of this devastating disease," he says. With just a final push, rinderpest could officially join smallpox as a disease of the past.

The article is a nice, and quite short summary of the elimination program. The link to the article will probably only work from campus computers. Off campus you will need to log on to the libraries proxy server.