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Jordan boosts measures to prevent bird flu outbreak
By Mohammad Ghazal with agency dispatches
A Palestinian in Hebron on Saturday holds up a chicken at a site where chickens from Israel were to be buried alive as a precaution for bird flu at a garbage dump (AP photo by Kevin Frayer)
THE GOVERNMENT ON Saturday said it will increase preventive measures to avert an outbreak of bird flu in the Kingdom.
Reiterating that Jordan was free of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, Minister of Health Saeed Darwazeh told reporters on Saturday that health and agricultural authorities will intensify their efforts to inspect and monitor the country's 2,600 poultry farms as well as increase tests on dead birds, particularly on border areas.
The government banned imports of poultry products and pet birds and allocated JD6 million to fund anti-bird flu measures.
In Israel, meanwhile, workers culled thousands of turkeys and chickens on Saturday as a senior agriculture ministry official said further tests were needed to confirm the country's first H5N1 bird flu cases in poultry.
Shimon Pokomonsky, a senior veterinarian at the Agriculture ministry, said the H5N1 strain likely caused the deaths of large numbers of turkeys in two southern Israeli farms.
Officials on Friday had said H5N1 bird flu killed the poultry.
?We have isolated the H5 virus but we are still working to find out what N it is,? said Pokomonsky, one of the key officials investigating the emergence of the virus in Israel.
?We are not certain it is N1, although it most likely is,? he told a news conference at the Beit Dagan Veterinary Institute in southern Israel.
Although hard to catch, people can contract bird flu by coming into contact with infected birds. Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that could pass easily between humans, triggering a pandemic in which millions could die.
Four farm workers feared to have caught the virus had not been infected, the health ministry said.
Three, who worked at the two southern farms, had been admitted to isolation units at a hospital. A fourth, who had been in contact with turkeys at another farm, was also hospitalised.
Agricultural ministry officials said workers had started culling 70,000 turkeys at the two southern farms. Up to half a million turkeys and chickens would be killed, they said.
?In the coming days we will make all efforts to finish the culling... to ensure the virus is not in other places,? Pokomonsky told Israel's Channel 10 television.
Agriculture ministry officials said workers were killing the turkeys in the infected areas by poisoning their drinking water.
The carcasses would be buried in pits.
Workers would also soon destroy flocks at two separate farms where the virus was suspected to have spread.
Near the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian customs officials intercepted two trucks carrying poultry which had entered illegally. Palestinian officials said they would kill the 2,600 chickens in the trucks.
Bulldozers later started burying the chickens alive in a pit by dumping soil on them.
?We want to get rid of these chickens because they came from Israel, which is an infected area,? deputy Hebron commander Musbah Baba said. ?We do not know for sure they are infected, we are just taking precautionary measures.? In a rare act of cooperation, Israel has been testing dead fowl found in the West Bank and Gaza on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
Agriculture ministry official Moshe Haimovich said he hoped officials from both sides could still work together once a government led by the Islamic group Hamas takes office.
Israel says it will not deal with a Hamas-led government unless it recognised the Jewish state and renounced violence.
?I hope that the very close cooperation which we have with our neighbours will continue. Everybody has to eat,? Haimovich told the news conference.
Egyptian woman dies
On Saturday, Egypt announced that a woman has died of the bird flu virus, marking the first reported human case in the country.
But the World Health Organisation (WHO) said there would need to be further tests before it could confirm whether the virus caused the woman's death.
?This is not confirmation for us,? said WHO spokesman Dick Thompson. ?We need to have samples sent to a certified laboratory.?
Egypt said the authorities had sent samples to Britain for further tests.
The woman, Amal Mohammed Ismail, was from Nawa village in the governorate of Qaliubiya just north of Cairo and had kept a domestic bird farm despite a ban on the practice since the arrival of bird flu in the country last month.
State television said she had died of a fever at the main hospital in the capital district of Abassiya nearly two weeks after she was admitted with flu-like symptoms.
Security forces have sealed off Ismail's village, a source at the interior ministry said, and health officials are taking samples from people who may have come into contact with her or her poultry.
The woman's death raised alarm in the Middle East, where two other human fatalities resulting from bird flu have already been reported in Iraq.
A 40-year-old Kurdish man from the northern town of Suleimaniyah died in February, about three weeks after his teenage niece succumbed to the virus.
Elsewhere in the region, birds have been reported infected with the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in Iran and Kuwait. A less potent form of the virus was detected in Saudi Arabia.
Egypt is on a major route for migratory birds, at the crossroads between Asia and Africa. An outbreak of the most pathogenic strain of the virus that originated in Asia was seen as inevitable after seven birds were found infected in February.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu, its most aggressive form, has killed nearly 100 people worldwide, according to the WHO, and seen millions of birds destroyed, amounting to huge losses for farmers.
H5N1 is an avian influenza subtype with pandemic potential, since it might ultimately adapt into a strain that is contagious among humans.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
By Mohammad Ghazal with agency dispatches
A Palestinian in Hebron on Saturday holds up a chicken at a site where chickens from Israel were to be buried alive as a precaution for bird flu at a garbage dump (AP photo by Kevin Frayer)
THE GOVERNMENT ON Saturday said it will increase preventive measures to avert an outbreak of bird flu in the Kingdom.
Reiterating that Jordan was free of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, Minister of Health Saeed Darwazeh told reporters on Saturday that health and agricultural authorities will intensify their efforts to inspect and monitor the country's 2,600 poultry farms as well as increase tests on dead birds, particularly on border areas.
The government banned imports of poultry products and pet birds and allocated JD6 million to fund anti-bird flu measures.
In Israel, meanwhile, workers culled thousands of turkeys and chickens on Saturday as a senior agriculture ministry official said further tests were needed to confirm the country's first H5N1 bird flu cases in poultry.
Shimon Pokomonsky, a senior veterinarian at the Agriculture ministry, said the H5N1 strain likely caused the deaths of large numbers of turkeys in two southern Israeli farms.
Officials on Friday had said H5N1 bird flu killed the poultry.
?We have isolated the H5 virus but we are still working to find out what N it is,? said Pokomonsky, one of the key officials investigating the emergence of the virus in Israel.
?We are not certain it is N1, although it most likely is,? he told a news conference at the Beit Dagan Veterinary Institute in southern Israel.
Although hard to catch, people can contract bird flu by coming into contact with infected birds. Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that could pass easily between humans, triggering a pandemic in which millions could die.
Four farm workers feared to have caught the virus had not been infected, the health ministry said.
Three, who worked at the two southern farms, had been admitted to isolation units at a hospital. A fourth, who had been in contact with turkeys at another farm, was also hospitalised.
Agricultural ministry officials said workers had started culling 70,000 turkeys at the two southern farms. Up to half a million turkeys and chickens would be killed, they said.
?In the coming days we will make all efforts to finish the culling... to ensure the virus is not in other places,? Pokomonsky told Israel's Channel 10 television.
Agriculture ministry officials said workers were killing the turkeys in the infected areas by poisoning their drinking water.
The carcasses would be buried in pits.
Workers would also soon destroy flocks at two separate farms where the virus was suspected to have spread.
Near the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian customs officials intercepted two trucks carrying poultry which had entered illegally. Palestinian officials said they would kill the 2,600 chickens in the trucks.
Bulldozers later started burying the chickens alive in a pit by dumping soil on them.
?We want to get rid of these chickens because they came from Israel, which is an infected area,? deputy Hebron commander Musbah Baba said. ?We do not know for sure they are infected, we are just taking precautionary measures.? In a rare act of cooperation, Israel has been testing dead fowl found in the West Bank and Gaza on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
Agriculture ministry official Moshe Haimovich said he hoped officials from both sides could still work together once a government led by the Islamic group Hamas takes office.
Israel says it will not deal with a Hamas-led government unless it recognised the Jewish state and renounced violence.
?I hope that the very close cooperation which we have with our neighbours will continue. Everybody has to eat,? Haimovich told the news conference.
Egyptian woman dies
On Saturday, Egypt announced that a woman has died of the bird flu virus, marking the first reported human case in the country.
But the World Health Organisation (WHO) said there would need to be further tests before it could confirm whether the virus caused the woman's death.
?This is not confirmation for us,? said WHO spokesman Dick Thompson. ?We need to have samples sent to a certified laboratory.?
Egypt said the authorities had sent samples to Britain for further tests.
The woman, Amal Mohammed Ismail, was from Nawa village in the governorate of Qaliubiya just north of Cairo and had kept a domestic bird farm despite a ban on the practice since the arrival of bird flu in the country last month.
State television said she had died of a fever at the main hospital in the capital district of Abassiya nearly two weeks after she was admitted with flu-like symptoms.
Security forces have sealed off Ismail's village, a source at the interior ministry said, and health officials are taking samples from people who may have come into contact with her or her poultry.
The woman's death raised alarm in the Middle East, where two other human fatalities resulting from bird flu have already been reported in Iraq.
A 40-year-old Kurdish man from the northern town of Suleimaniyah died in February, about three weeks after his teenage niece succumbed to the virus.
Elsewhere in the region, birds have been reported infected with the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in Iran and Kuwait. A less potent form of the virus was detected in Saudi Arabia.
Egypt is on a major route for migratory birds, at the crossroads between Asia and Africa. An outbreak of the most pathogenic strain of the virus that originated in Asia was seen as inevitable after seven birds were found infected in February.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu, its most aggressive form, has killed nearly 100 people worldwide, according to the WHO, and seen millions of birds destroyed, amounting to huge losses for farmers.
H5N1 is an avian influenza subtype with pandemic potential, since it might ultimately adapt into a strain that is contagious among humans.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
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