EGYPT: Two-year-old Egyptian boy tests positive for bird flu

A 2-year-old Egyptian boy has tested positive for bird flu, bringing the number of people who have contracted the disease in the most populous Arab country to 26, the health ministry. The Egyptian health ministry reported on Monday (March 19) that a two-year-old Egyptian boy has tested positive for bird flu, bringing to 26 the number of people who have contracted the disease in the most populous Arab country. The ministry identified the boy as Youssef Mohamed Mahmoud and said he was admitted to hospital on Friday (March 16) in the southern town of Aswan, the same city where a 10-year-old girl tested positive for the disease last week. With the bird flu crisis worsening in Egypt, health officials are particularly concerned with the raising of poultry in people's homes and backyards, where hygiene standards are lax and birds are difficult to locate and vaccinate. For the people who live the narrow warrens of Shubra El-Kheima, a sprawling, largely poor district north of Cairo, raising poultry is both a source of income and sustenance. Om Hassan says that she has done all she can to ensure that she does so safely. "I know that there is bird flu. As long as there is no harm, and I've immunized my birds, and my birds are fine, what am I supposed to do with them? Slaughter them? And this is also something that benefits my children - there are eggs, there is turkey, and I feel safer about them then the turkey I buy from outside. I feel safer with these then those," she said. The Egyptian government's vaccination program has largely contained the virus on poultry farms and hatcheries, although bird flu war has been detected in chickens and ducks from around a dozen vaccinated flocks. Another man who raises poultry in Shubra El-Kheima, Atef Youssef, said that in any event he had more faith in the birds they raised on their own, then the ones from poultry farms. "If we don't eat from these chickens… we've raised these and we know them. We've raised these with our own hands we know them. But these white chickens, what are we supposed to do with them? We don't know how they've been raised, what they eat or what they drink," he said. Since the virus first surfaced in Egyptian poultry in early 2006, 13 Egyptians have died from the disease. Most of those who fell ill were reported to have had contact with sick or dead household birds, primarily in northern Egypt. Egypt has the largest number of confirmed human cases outside of Asia, and with eight confirmed cases this year is among the hardest-hit countries world-wide for 2007. The Director for Communicable Disease Control for the WHO's regional office, Dr. Zuhair Hallaj, said today that the unregulated poultry industry was the real source of the problem. "This is the second wave of bird flu in Egypt and most of the cases occur among families who raise chickens in the backyard and it is expected that we would have such cases, until the problem of the backyard, erasing the chickens in the backyard is solved." In response to the recent reports, Hallaj said that it was "normal" for the disease to surface in vaccinated flocks, and that no immunization program could ever be 100 percent effective. Hallaj also said that the size and importance of the poultry industry in Egypt also makes managing the crisis difficult. "Well in Egypt you have more than five million families raising poultry at home, particularly in the rural areas, and they consider that this is one of their economic income, so they would like to raised these chickens, take care of them and, most probably, this problem will not be solved until we can reach with vaccination every chicken in the houses," he said. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation's chief veterinary officer said on Thursday that Egypt was one of three countries that still do not have sufficient bird flu controls in place. Health experts fear the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that passes easily from human to human, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions. The virus has killed 169 people world-wide since 2003, according to WHO.

ITN Source | March 20, 2007

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