http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395647571&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
Mar. 21, 2006 11:21 | Updated Mar. 23, 2006 11:51
Israel to transfer anti-bird flu medicine to Gaza Strip
By RUTH EGLASH AND ORLY HALPERN AND JPOST STAFF
Health Minister Ya'akov Edri directed his ministry to give the Palestinian
Authority 300 doses of 'Tamiflu' tablets, which are designed to combat the
deadly H5N1 bird flu virus.
The medicine will be transferred to the Gaza Strip by means of the District
Coordination Office (DCO) at the Erez checkpoint.
The decision to give the PA the medicine came as a result of a request issued
by a World Health Organization official to the Health Ministry.
Initial tests conducted on the dead chickens from Gaza indicated that the H5N1
strain of bird flu has spread to Gaza, the first outbreak of the disease in the
Palestinian Authority territories, Israel's Agriculture Ministry said
Wednesday.
In addition, following concern Wednesday that the virus had spread to the
Jordan Valley, the H5N1 strain was confirmed Thursday morning in Moshav
Beka'ot. However, in Netaim, in central Israel, the virus was not yet
confirmed.
The Gaza tests were conducted after about 200 chickens were found dead in a
coop in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip early Wednesday, ministry spokeswoman
Dafna Yarisca said.
The PA said the dead chickens were found in a private farm in eastern Gaza. It
was not immediately clear if they were talking about two different cases.
Although final results will not be available for at least 48 hours, the
ministry has advised the PA to treat the initial results as definitive because
they came up positive for the H5 protein, Yarisca said.
Further tests will determine if it is H5N1.
Uri Na'amati, head of the Eshkol Regional Council, near Gaza, told The
Jerusalem Post that "the discovery of bird flu in Gaza changes everything. We
are so close to them, and I do not know if they will deal with the problem like
it should be dealt with. It definitely complicates things."
Israeli veterinarians met with their Palestinian counterparts yesterday to
discuss how best to deal with the problem, said Na'amati, adding that every
kibbutz and community with poultry in the Eshkol region was under constant
inspection to ensure that the H5N1 strain did not continue spreading. Deputy PA
Agriculture Minister Azzam Tubaili said the infected Gaza farms will be
isolated. "We're taking this very seriously," he said, adding that the farm
owners are being tested to ensure they have not been infected.
Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian communities along the Jordan Valley were
also quick to react to possible cases of bird flu in their region. Leaders of
the Jewish communities held an emergency meeting Wednesday to draw up a plan of
action for their chicken-coop heavy region after a number of dead birds were
discovered in Moshav Beka'ot, in the Jordan Valley Regional Council.
Yael Shaltieli, head of the neighboring Beit She'an Valley Regional Council,
expressed fear that the deadly virus would spread to her district. "It's very
close, but thank God it hasn't reached us yet," she said.
The Beit She'an Valley is home to the Of Tov chicken slaughterhouse, the
largest in the country.
While most of the poultry farms in the Jordan Valley are in Jewish settlements,
the one Palestinian village in the area which raises eggs may have been hit.
Adnan Hammad, a Jericho city council member of, told the Post that "three days
ago, they found some dead birds in Ouja, a few kilometers north of Jericho. The
Israelis came and took the birds, but we received no word of the results. There
are a few egg farms in Ouja. I think there is cooperation with the Israelis
because we don't have laboratories to examine those things."
In the Jordanian town of Saffi, one dead bird was also found three days ago.
The Jordanian government is setting up an emergency center in Saffi, Munqeth
Mehyar, chairperson of Friends of the Earth Middle East, said.
"The center is being established to react quickly to any future cases north or
south of there, he told the Post while here Wednesday for a meeting to discuss
a joint Jordanian-Israeli peace park at the Jordan River.
Not far from Kibbutz Nahshon, where bird flu was detected last week,
representatives of Kibbutz Tzora, close to Beit Shemesh, said that things were
calm.
"The media is exaggerating," said one worker. "The Veterinary Service is
constantly checking our poultry, only the kibbutz workers are allowed in and
out of the coops and everyone is cleaning off afterward." Kibbutz secretary
Miriam Lapid said that while there was no sign so far of the bird flu, "we are
worried because poultry is one of our main sources of income."
Bracha Rager, a senior Ben-Gurion University microbiology and immunology
professor, said the avian flu virus is unpredictable and too little is known by
scientists about how it mutates. But because the virulent strain has hit the
West, she stressed, it has gotten the world's attention.
"Hundreds, if not thousands of people have died of something similar to West
Nile virus in the Reunion Island region in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar,
but nobody has gotten excited because it [only] affected the developing world,"
she said.
Rager, a former chief scientist in the Health Ministry who has developed a
passive vaccine against West Nile that has been proven effective in lab
animals, and is now working on an active vaccine, told The Jerusalem Post on
Wednesday that the amount of panic over pathogens is not necessarily in
proportion to the
amount of publicity they get.
"Infectious diseases go in waves of interest, depending on whom they hurt, not
according to real risks," she said. "If there weren't fear about avian flu
reaching the Western world, nobody would get excited. Today it is in the center
of interest, even though mortality is low. Measles kills hundreds of thousands
of children in Africa each year, but you don't hear of it. Avian flu has
infected 200 and killed about half, but you certainly have been hearing about
it."
But she said scientists don't know enough about avian flu virus - of which
there are 15 strains, one of them able to be transmitted by poultry and birds
to people in direct contact with them - to develop a vaccine to protect humans
from it.
What worries public health officials is that a strain of avian flu virus will
mutate, like the "swine flu" virus that killed millions around the world some
90 years ago, and spread by people-to-people transmission, she said.
Judy Siegel and AP contributed to this report.
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