Dr Walter Plowright was awarded the World Food Prize in 1999 for developing a vaccine against rinderpest.
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The results of his experiment in Friesland were encouraging, but they proved to be the exception: testing by others in the provinces of Utrecht, Leeuwarden and Friesland obtained disastrous results.
An outbreak of Rinderpest in the 1890s had previously killed 80 to 90 percent of all cattle in Southern Africa.
Ovine rinderpest, also commonly known as peste des petits ruminants (PPR), is a contagious disease affecting goats and sheep in Africa (from the Tropic of Cancer to the Equator), the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.