CAIRO: Two Egyptians have been discharged from the hospital after recovering from bird flu infection, a Health Ministry official said on Friday. The two sisters, aged 18 months and six years, had been in hospital since at least Sunday, when the ministry said blood tests showed they had been infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus. Since then, the virus has killed a third Egyptian, and four people now remain in the hospital battling the disease. The ministry said the sisters had received Tamiflu, an anti-viral medication thought to be the best defense against bird flu. Amal Sobhy Mohamed Khaled and her sister, Israa, have left [the] hospital … after recovering from bird flu, the state MENA news agency quoted a Health Ministry official as saying. Their recovery brings the number of Egyptians who have beaten the disease to four. Bird flu was first detected in Egypt in February, but the first of the country s 11 human infections was reported in mid-March. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it is concerned about the disease s human toll in a relatively short period of time. The agency has so far confirmed four of the 11 cases, including two of the three that died. The disease, which has killed at least 109 people worldwide, has so far not passed from human to human, but it can be contracted from handling infected birds. Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that could pass easily between humans, sparking a pandemic. The bulk of human cases were reported in the Far East and China, where the epidemic broke out in 2003, but Egypt, Turkey and Azerbaijan have been the most affected countries in the new wave of infections that spread westward this year.
Egypt, where urban rooftop and backyard rearing are almost part of national folklore, has slapped a ban on domestic poultry farms and more than 10 million birds are believed to have been slaughtered. While monitoring compliance with government measures is easier in large poultry farms, many Egyptians with small domestic farms have been reluctant to cull their birds The government pays around LE 5 – less than $1 – for every slaughtered bird. Egypt consumes some 800 million birds a year and exports many to the entire region.
State efforts to contain the virus have been hampered by people who continue to rear poultry domestically despite the ban, because they say they are too poor to slaughter their birds. Women, who make up all three of Egypt s fatalities, are often responsible for slaughtering and cooking domestic poultry, and the government has called for more awareness about bird flu among women to protect themselves and their families.
Saber Abdel Aziz Galal, a ministry of agriculture official in charge of poultry infections, said the rising figures were expected. People do not respect instructions from the authorities, he told AFP. They consider poultry capital and do not think about their health. Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, is on a major route for migratory birds, at the crossroads between Asia and Africa. Agencies
