Programme estimate No 5 operational period from 01-11-2004 to 31-10-2005.

Ethiopia has — since 1989 participated in two subsequent programmes that is to say PARC and PACE funded mainly by the EU and focusing on the eradication of Rinderpest. The results are very promising. In fact since 1996 Ethiopia has seen no outbreak of rinderpest anymore, vaccination against Rinderpest has ceased and the serosurveillance does not show the existence of any Rinderpest virus in Ethiopia. This had entailed a self declaration of provision freedom from Rinderpest on zonal basis in May 1999, a second self declaration modifying and enlarging the provisional disease free zone in December 2003 and the preparation of an application for freedom from Rinderpest on zonal basis in early 2004. The unclear Rinderpest situation in neighbouring countries, that is to say Kenya and Somalia does not allow Ethiopia to go further on the OIE pathway , so far no freedom from infection on zonal bask is foreseen by OIE. In order to attain the overall goal of eradicating Rinderpest worldwide — the remaining possible Rinderpest foci seem to be situated only in the Somali Ecosystem, Ethiopia is willing to join its neighbours in their effort to eradicate Rinderpest in maintaining a surveillance zone bordering Kenya and Somalia and in monitoring continuously the concerned districts for the presence of Rinderpest not only in cattle but also in wildlife which is suspected to maintain the virus. This additional tasks above routine activities of disease surveillance in order to attain the next step in the OIE pathv,av entails additional costs for Ethiopia. Considering that the initial indicative budget allocated to Ethiopia for the execution of a 5 year control programme have not been spent completely, in fact Ethiopia has only benefited so far from 4 years of funding, the present programme estimate for a two years extension was prepared. The objective of the planned activity is to identify any potential sources of Rinderpest and to consolidate the rinderpest free status in and beyond the actually provisional disease free zone and to integrate the Rinderpest surveillance into the national epidemiosurveillance network V hick focuses on the control of other major epizootics such as CBPP, RVF, PPR etc