The beautiful horned, by Jean Dubuffet, 1954 (via Wikipaintings)

A news item on the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) website reports the following.

‘The RVC (through Professor Dirk Werling) is involved in a multi-national program grant entitled “Improved vaccines for the control of East Coast fever in cattle in Africa”. This project was initially jointly led by the late Professor Declan McKeever and Professor Werling and the RVC are proud to continue taking forward this important project despite Professor McKeever’s recent sad death.

‘The grant, worth nearly $15 million, is funded through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Normal Borlaug Commemorative Research Initiative (NBCRI) of Feed the Future and the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish.

‘East Coast fever is caused by the protozoan parasite Theileria parva ranks first in tick-borne disease constraints of cattle in sub-Saharan Africa and kills one animal every 30 seconds. It has a devastating impact on pastoralists and smallholder farmers because it can kill within 3-4 weeks of infection. . . .

The project is implemented by a team of multi-national experts from the field of East Coast fever research, bovine immunology, parasitology and genomics with essential inputs from a private-public partnership and the private sector. . . .’

Read the whole article on the Royal Veterinary College website: Improved vaccines for the control of East Coast fever in cattle in Africa, 6 Feb 2014.