Man recovers from bird flu as wave of foot-and-mouth is reported

Health ministry officials reported the gradual recovery of a farmer from Qaliubiya province, 40 kilometres north of Cairo, who was taken ill with the H5N1 avian virus on Thursday.

Administered with Tamiflu tablets, Mohamed Bahieddin Abdel Moneim, 30, remains in hospital under close observation.

“He was treated with Tamiflu at a Qaliuybiya hospital, and his life is no longer in danger,” said Ministry of Health official Sayyid al-Abbasi. “He’s well now, though he’s still under surveillance.”

The owner of a poultry farm, Abdel Moneim is the second reported human case of avian influenza in Egypt. The first, also from Qaliubiya, was a woman who died on 17 March. The two victims were from different villages, however, and had no apparent contact with each other.

Potentially deadly, the disease can be cured with Tamiflu capsules if detected in time. According to al-Abbasi, the health ministry has so far provided hospitals countrywide with a total of 82,000 10-capsule boxes of the drug, a number it hopes to raise to one million over coming weeks.

Public health authorities have been on alert since the first case of the virus was reported among birds in mid-February. Since then, over 10 million chickens and domestic birds have been culled nationwide on orders of the government, crippling the poultry industry and badly affecting its workers.

A ban on the importation of live fowl and the domestic transport of birds has also been introduced and enforced. To date, infected birds have been reported in 17 out of Egypt’s 26 governorates, according to the health ministry.

In related news, reports of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in cattle have increased rapidly in recent weeks. Although FMD is a relatively constant feature of farm life, a new wave of the disease has struck Egyptian cattle with unusual strength, say local veterinarians.

“Usually, FMD doesn’t constitute a problem, despite its constant presence,” said Sami Taha, member of the Egyptian Veterinarians’ Syndicate. “But this time the wave has been particularly harsh, and cattle across several governorates have been dying from the disease.”

FMD is a highly contagious and potentially deadly virus that mainly affects cattle and sheep. According to the European Commission for the Control of FMD, the disease has been regularly reported in Egypt over the last half-century.

While veterinarians say the disease is easily contained on a technical level, they complain that a lack of funding could hurt prevention measures in the case of an epidemic. “We have significant expertise in the veterinarian community to deal with a potential outbreak,” said Taha. “But we lack the required funds to act with maximum efficiency.”

While humans only rarely contract the virus, warned Taha, an outbreak could cripple the local cattle industry and damage the national economy.