Egypt reports third bird flu death in a week

CAIRO:  An Egyptian man died on Wednesday from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, bringing to three the number of victims in less than a week amid stepped up efforts to contain a resurgence of the epidemic.

Reda Abdel Halim Farid, 26, died in a Cairo hospital, the health ministry announced. He was the third person to die since Sunday.

All three were from the same region in the Delta governorate of Gharbiya.

Egypt is the fifth most affected country in the world with a total of 18 human cases and 10 deaths since the virus first appeared in the country in February.

It is also the hardest-hit non-Asian country. "We did expect this to happen," health ministry adviser Abdel Rahman Shaheen said.

"When we had a period of calm between May and October, people started thinking the disease was over, but we insisted on creating more awareness among the people," he said.    "We are still expecting more cases but the idea is to keep them to the smallest possible number," Shaheen added.

The health ministry last month launched a 10-million-dollar awareness campaign on television, radio and in newspapers.

Meetings are also held in rural areas to educate the population on the risks of bird flu.   

The health ministry has also asked the cabinet for 150 million dollars to prepare for a possible pandemic, should the virus mutate and become transmissible from human to human.

"I would expect bird flu to stay in Egypt for a few years to come, it has become an endemic disease," Health Minister Hatem al-Gebali said in a recent interview.

He also said he expected this winter's degree of infection to be inferior to that of last year because all the live bird stock in farms has been vaccinated.

According to health sources in Egypt, around 1.7 million chickens are produced every day in the country.

The authorities have struggled to contain the virus in Egypt's many domestic rearings despite having culled hundreds of thousands of birds.

"The big problem lies in households. There are 4.5 million families who raise birds as a source of food and a source of income," Gebali said.

 Shaheen assured however that general awareness and prevention had improved.    "Awareness has increased significantly... What we are missing is to try to involve religious leaders in their speeches to the people, because they are very influential," he said.

The World Health Organisation says the risk of a pandemic influenza is high. Vaccines are not expected to be available until several months after a pandemic breaks out.

Experts say that stocks of the Tamiflu drug which can be used to treat infected people would only cover five per cent of world population, with developed countries taking the lion's share.

According to WHO statistics predating the three latest deaths in Egypt, the H5N1 virus has killed a total of 154 people worldwide.