WHO to declare country free of avian flu

The World Health Organization is expected to pronounce Jordan free of avian flu in the coming days, following the complete recovery of an Egyptian national who tested positive early this month.

“After the discovery of the first case of bird flu, if 21 days pass without the discovery of another case, the country is declared free of the disease,” said Khalid Abu Rumman, head of a government media committee devoted to bird flu awareness.

The Egyptian national who tested positive for avian flu, has been released from hospital, health officials announced on Monday.

“[The patient] has recovered and was taken off medication,” said Karak Public Hospital Director Sultan Tarawneh. “After receiving a visit by a technical committee from the Ministry of Health, he was discharged.”

Abu Rumman was quoted by English-language daily Jordan Times as saying that the patient had “completely recovered after receiving the necessary drugs”.

The patient, a migrant worker who contracted the virus in Egypt before returning to Jordan, was diagnosed on 31 March with the human strain of the virus. He reportedly bred poultry and slaughtered birds infected with avian flu while in Egypt, where a total of three people have so far succumbed to the disease.

According to health experts, the H5N1 virus is transmitted through contact with infected birds and not from cooked poultry. There are no reports of human-to-human transmission of the disease to date.

In late March, the potentially deadly virus was detected in four turkeys in the Ajloun governorate, north of the capital, Amman. Since then, some 20,000 birds have been culled in affected areas while public awareness campaigns about the disease have been intensified.

Cases of avian influenza have appeared in the region with growing frequency, with reports of infection emerging in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.