NAWA, Egypt: Mohsen Rizq insists there is no poultry left in his village after a local died of bird flu two weeks ago, but the cacophony of squawking coming from a locked shed and the droppings in his backyard give him away. In another home nearby, in the village of Nawa some 30 km north of Cairo where Egypt s first bird flu fatality was recorded, a father refused to acknowledge a large duck in the front room of his hovel, where several infants were playing. There is no more bird flu here, thank God. We killed all the birds, the man said, as he tried to block the clearly visible duck from view. Peasants in Nawa say they know the risks of bird flu and how it can be avoided. But poverty means they refuse to slaughter their fowl, even though the virus has killed two of their countrymen and infected two or possibly three others. A short walk through Nawa reveals, through the sounds and smells of birds trapped in sheds and houses, that birds that would normally roam such a village have been hidden, despite a state ban on the domestic rearing of fowl. The government issued the ban after the deadly bird flu virus was detected in Egypt last month. You need to have more health education. Most of the cases are from backyard farms and people who are not really abiding by the instructions of the Ministry of Health, Hassan Al Bushra of the World Health Organization (WHO) said. However, villagers were well aware of how bird flu is spread and what should be done to contain it. They said poverty, not ignorance, had driven people to rear poultry in secret. Everyone lives on chicken here. What are we supposed to eat instead: Fava-bean sandwiches? The village has been devastated, local woman Ragah Mustafa said. Her granddaughter knew the exact temperature above which the virus is destroyed when meat is cooked, she added. Egyptian poultry farmers say the devastated poultry industry was once worth about LE17 billion ($3 billion) and supported up to 3 million people. Many poor Egyptians try to supplement their income by breeding their own fowl. Poultry once constituted about 50 percent of the animal protein consumed in Egypt, the world s most populous Arab state. Farmers say that state compensation for culled poultry is either non existent or a fraction of their losses. In the absence of adequate compensation, secret poultry rearing is likely to increase the risk of the spread of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus as people hide fowl in homes and become reluctant to report infections. The problem of this woman (who died) was that she was a simple woman. She didn t tell the doctors what she had really been doing. She didn t tell them she had been rearing poultry, and she lied to three doctors, Rizq said. To date, local tests have confirmed that four Egyptians have been infected with H5N1. Two of them died, while the other two have recovered after taking Tamiflu, an anti-viral medication regarded as the best defense against bird flu. Bird flu is difficult for people to catch, but can be contracted through contact with infected birds. Scientists fear bird flu could mutate into a form that can pass easily between humans, sparking a pandemic in which millions could die. It has so far killed at least 105 people in eight countries, according to a tally from the WHO. The WHO is yet to include the Egyptian cases in its toll. Health officials say there is no evidence of H5N1 passing from human to human in Egypt. Experts have said the disease could be endemic in Egypt for years, but Rizq did not doubt Egypt s ability to eradicate it. When Egyptians are in trouble, we always come together, he said, as birds continued to squawk in his shed. Reuters
