The Egyptian government is working on new legislation that will restrict the movement of live poultry as the country reported its 24th case of avian flu.
A four-year-old boy from the Nile Delta town of Daqahliya tested positive for the H5N1 virus on 11 March. Sayyid al-Abbasi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, said the boy had contracted the virus from domestic birds raised by his family. He added that his condition was stable.
Health officials said the new bird flu legislation was expected to be in place within the next few weeks. It would involve the creation of four zones with 10-15km buffers between them. In an effort to contain any potential spread of the virus, no-one will be allowed to move birds or chicks between the zones.
“The legislation has already been presented to parliament for approval. It puts restrictions on the trade of live poultry and imposes fines on those who violate it by moving birds from one city to another,” Dr Nasr al-Sayyed, First Undersecretary for the Preventive Sector at the Ministry of Health, told IRIN.
Al-Sayyed said that the legislation will aim to change the mentality of buying live poultry in Egypt and encourage the consumption of frozen birds.
“We are targeting people who live in urban areas because we understand the difficulty of changing the practices of the rural community. It is difficult to convince people living in villages to give up breeding birds at home and to buy frozen birds instead,” he said.
Previous campaigns to curtail the incidences of bird flu infection in the country have been hampered by the fact that so-called ‘backyard birds’ are an integral part of daily diets and income for Egypt’s rural poor. Their food security depends to a large extent on the rearing of chickens and ducks because they are cheap and easy to rear at home.
However, domestically reared birds are the major source of human infection.
The country’s densely populated Nile Valley has seen the worst concentration of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza infection outside Asia. To combat the virus, the country has embarked on a new campaign that the government estimates will cost about US $450 million.
“Despite the government’s efforts to seek support from international donor organisations, we received very little money. There is a misconception that the [bird flu] danger comes from countries in Southeast Asia, but the human cases that have appeared in Egypt prove that more attention should be given to this country, which is located in the heart of the Middle East and an important part of Africa,” health ministry spokesman al-Abbasi said.
Yasser al-Gamel, the World Bank’s Human Development Coordinator in Cairo, told IRIN on Monday that Egypt has submitted a request to gain access to the World Bank-administered Global Trust Fund to fight avian flu. The request is yet to be approved. However, the Bank has given Egypt about US $5 million for anti-avian flu activities under an ongoing health programme for the country.
ar/dh/ed
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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
