MB MP: Bird Flu Has Entrenched In Egypt

In his statement to Ikhwanweb, Member of the MB Parliamentary Bloc and Veterinarians Syndicate Council Dr. Ahmed El-Khoulany described the Egyptian government’s approach with the Bird Flu as “unsystematic and unscientific,” and hence, leading to the entrenchment of the disease in Egypt. 
 
El-Khouly explained that there are two approaches in dealing with pandemic diseases, either the elimination of their sources, or providing a means for immunization against them.  El-Khouly pointed out that the Egyptian government had used the two approaches in an unscientific manner as it imported vaccines from a country that was itself unable to eliminate the disease, and, using the other approach, it buried the afflicted birds in a manner which led to the leakage of microbes into the groundwater and rivers, a matter which additionally confirmed the entrenchment of the pandemic in Egypt.
 
El-Khoulany also stressed the danger of household human involvement with afflicted birds indicating that all bird flu infections in Egypt had been contracted within households and not one was contracted in stores selling poultry accusing the government of trying to close these stores for the interests of a group of importers.
 
El-Khoulany stressed that immunization is the only solution now left to combat the bird-flu outbreak crisis as elimination has become no longer possible.  El-Khoulany further called on the local manufacturing of a protective serum using the local microbe and requested an increase in the budget of research labs warning the government from continuing to fail in paying its financial dues to research labs as last year when research labs requested 30 million LE for a protective serum against the Rift Valley fever the Minister of Finance decreased it to 10 million LE and hasn’t paid them since.
 
Egypt ranked first world-wide in the number of human bird flu afflictions since 2009.  Health Minister Official Spokesperson Dr. Abdur-Rahman Shaheen said that in spite of the increase in the number of human afflictions, the rate of deaths has been the least in Egypt clarifying that among the 60 afflicted only 23 died.  Shaheen also admitted that the pandemic had, indeed, entrenched in Egypt and that overcoming it would take several years, probably decades, and that the probability of its evolving into a more harmful strain was very high stressing that the only way out of this crisis is for society to switch to frozen poultry products.