http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=23299#
Egypt needs to raise public awareness of how to avoid bird flu, which the government says has killed one person and infected four others this month, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said Monday.
There was no sign of human-to-human transmission in Egypt, said Hassan al-Bushra, WHO regional adviser for communicable diseases surveillance.
"You need to do more health education. Most of the cases are backyard farms and people who are not really abiding by the instructions of the Health Ministry," Bushra said.
Some, for example, had moved their poultry indoors after being told to dispose of the birds, he said.
Bird flu, which has spread from Asia to the Middle East, Africa and Europe, remains essentially an animal disease but can infect people who come into contact with sick poultry.
The virus was first reported among birds in Egypt in February. The first human infection appeared in mid-March.
A U.S. military laboratory in Egypt has confirmed that four people have caught the virus.
Two of the infected people left hospital Sunday, having been treated with Tamiflu, which experts say is the best drug for fighting the virus in humans.
"Generally the government is doing a good job. Now they have proper supervision, people in every province," Bushra said.
The WHO has yet to independently confirm any of the infections of humans in Egypt. The WHO confirms suspected cases in Egypt through laboratory tests in Britain, Bushra said.
Egypt said Monday a teenager hospitalized in the Nile delta governorate of Kafr al-Sheikh with bird flu symptoms could be the fifth person in the country infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus.
The 18-year-old girl was in stable condition, Nasser Kamel, spokesman for the government's anti-bird flu committee, said.
He added that further tests were still being carried out to determine if her symptoms proved a bird flu infection in the province north of Cairo.
An Iraqi man died from the suspected deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in Baghdad, while one member of his family has been admitted for tests on similar suspicions, a spokeswoman of the high-level committee to fight bird flu set up by the Iraqi government said Monday.
The member of the family has been admitted to a hospital in Kamaliya neighbhorhood of east Baghdad, the spokeswoman said, adding that samples of the two have been sent to Cairo for further analysis.
Earlier this year Iraq confirmed deaths of two people from avian flu in the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Meanwhile, Palestinian agriculture officials began poisoning 15,000 chickens in the Gaza Strip Monday following an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus.
The culling began after the World Bank offered to donate $2 million to compensate farmers, who had been reluctant to put down their chickens without recompense. Israeli agriculture officials were assisting their Palestinian counterparts.
Israel put down more than one million turkeys and chickens after an outbreak of the virus at six farms, most of them near the Gaza Strip. Israel says the virus has, for the time being, been contained on its side of the border.
There have been no confirmed cases of the virus infecting humans in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.
Egypt needs to raise public awareness of how to avoid bird flu, which the government says has killed one person and infected four others this month, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said Monday.
There was no sign of human-to-human transmission in Egypt, said Hassan al-Bushra, WHO regional adviser for communicable diseases surveillance.
"You need to do more health education. Most of the cases are backyard farms and people who are not really abiding by the instructions of the Health Ministry," Bushra said.
Some, for example, had moved their poultry indoors after being told to dispose of the birds, he said.
Bird flu, which has spread from Asia to the Middle East, Africa and Europe, remains essentially an animal disease but can infect people who come into contact with sick poultry.
The virus was first reported among birds in Egypt in February. The first human infection appeared in mid-March.
A U.S. military laboratory in Egypt has confirmed that four people have caught the virus.
Two of the infected people left hospital Sunday, having been treated with Tamiflu, which experts say is the best drug for fighting the virus in humans.
"Generally the government is doing a good job. Now they have proper supervision, people in every province," Bushra said.
The WHO has yet to independently confirm any of the infections of humans in Egypt. The WHO confirms suspected cases in Egypt through laboratory tests in Britain, Bushra said.
Egypt said Monday a teenager hospitalized in the Nile delta governorate of Kafr al-Sheikh with bird flu symptoms could be the fifth person in the country infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus.
The 18-year-old girl was in stable condition, Nasser Kamel, spokesman for the government's anti-bird flu committee, said.
He added that further tests were still being carried out to determine if her symptoms proved a bird flu infection in the province north of Cairo.
An Iraqi man died from the suspected deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in Baghdad, while one member of his family has been admitted for tests on similar suspicions, a spokeswoman of the high-level committee to fight bird flu set up by the Iraqi government said Monday.
The member of the family has been admitted to a hospital in Kamaliya neighbhorhood of east Baghdad, the spokeswoman said, adding that samples of the two have been sent to Cairo for further analysis.
Earlier this year Iraq confirmed deaths of two people from avian flu in the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Meanwhile, Palestinian agriculture officials began poisoning 15,000 chickens in the Gaza Strip Monday following an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus.
The culling began after the World Bank offered to donate $2 million to compensate farmers, who had been reluctant to put down their chickens without recompense. Israeli agriculture officials were assisting their Palestinian counterparts.
Israel put down more than one million turkeys and chickens after an outbreak of the virus at six farms, most of them near the Gaza Strip. Israel says the virus has, for the time being, been contained on its side of the border.
There have been no confirmed cases of the virus infecting humans in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.