CAIRO: The government plan in combating bird flu has proven successful, Minister of Health Hatem El-Gabaly said, explaining that the death rate from the H1N5 virus has substantially decreased and citizen awareness has increased. El-Gabaly was in parliament Tuesday to respond to several investigation requests about the effectiveness of the precautionary measures taken against bird flu, which include the culling of poultry suspected of having the virus. One-hundred and eight cases of bird flu have been reported in Egypt; 75 recovered and 33 died, the minister said. Accordingly, Egypt's H1N5 death rate stands at 6.3 percent, lower than the global rate of 7.61 percent, the ministry said in a statement. “The government has been dealing with the issue with complete transparency and sincerity, as well as a commitment to giving the highest quality treatments at the hospitals,” the minister said. Inspection committees are currently going around the country inspecting bird farms in different governorates which led them to discover bird flu centers, according to the Information and Decision Support Center. The labs affiliated with the ministry have so far tested 11,565 cases suspected of bird flu. On the other hand, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement on Wednesday saying that bird flu outbreaks that have killed seven people in several countries so far this year which shows that the virus remains a threat to humans. "The newly confirmed human and poultry cases of avian influenza this year are a reminder that the virus poses a real and continuous threat to human health," they stated. “So far this year, authorities monitored 21 human cases of bird flu from Egypt, Vietnam and Indonesia, including seven deaths,” WHO said. Last week, the Ministry of Health has announced one death from bird flu, a four-year-old boy from the Beni Suef, raising the death toll from the virus to 33 since it first appeared in Egypt in 2006. It was the sixth death from bird flu since the beginning of 2010. Human cases of bird flu peaked in 2006 at 115, with 79 deaths, worldwide. The number has since declined, with 73 human cases and 32 deaths in 2009, the WHO said. However, the fatality rate for humans infected with bird flu remains high at 59 percent, it added.
