Egypt's Media Campaign and Vaccination Drive Help Drop Bird Flu Rates

This BBS News article discusses the work being done to reduce the occurrence of avian influenza in Egypt. According to the article, the Egyptian government's Supreme Committee to Combat Bird Flu announced on February 2 2008 that infection rates among poultry in farms and in backyards had dropped by an average of 40 percent since the beginning of 2008, due to media campaigns and vaccination drives. A committee spokesperson attributed the statistic to the positive steps taken by the national committee in cooperation with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, the World Health Organization (WHO), local councils, as well as veterinary officials and the media.


The Egyptian office of Save the Children has started an "avian flu free villages" campaign, initiated by Johns Hopkins University, in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and involving civil society organisations and local governors. The campaign focuses on how people can identify bird flu risk factors and detect infection symptoms. Training of groups of rural women who raise and slaughter poultry domestically, as well as of school children in the villages of the most affected governorates (Qena, Minya, and Fayyoum), is part of a strategy of focusing on high risk groups in affected rural areas. Rather than relying exclusively on national mass media campaigning, this strategy favours developing better surveillance mechanisms and forming special teams for rapid response in rural areas, who would be deployed "to an outbreak site as soon as a new case is detected and immediately start awareness mobilisation about the bird flu virus in the affected zone."


The article states that "the successful implementation of new communication strategies and achieving a long-term decrease in infection rates depends on changing popular behaviour, such as slaughtering practices or improving hygiene standards." Because behaviour change is proving challenging, preventive measures to combat the spread of the avian flu virus have included banning the raising of birds in towns and the transportation of poultry without authorization between provinces, and massive inoculation campaigns. "According to the Supreme Committee to Combat Bird Flu, 100 million birds were vaccinated against the virus in January, compared to 76 million in December 2007, and 36 training courses were organized by the government involving over 883 physicians and veterinarians to improve local capacity in preventing future outbreaks."