United Nations’ Cairo media office denied news on Tuesday that has been circulated by Egyptian media channels that quoted a World Health Organization doctor who claimed the death of doctors by the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu.
In a statement on Tuesday, the UN said that WHO confirmed the news over doctors’ death were untrue.
The recent statements over the virus, according to the UN, showed that total number of cases infected with the virus is 172 and that victims were 16.
The UN works alongside Egyptian authorities to monitor situation of the virus in the country.
The statement also said the deaths were more spread out than the media had portrayed. “The latest surveillance data on H1N1… cases showed no clustering in Dakahalia Governorate.”
Nasr Tantawy, a WHO adviser for therapeutic medicine in Cairo, had earlier mentioned that number of deaths of swine flu since 1 January were 14 cases, four of them were doctors.
Meanwhile in Shebin al-Koam, Menufiya Governorate, two deaths have been reported due to the swine flu, on Monday evening.
Doctor Hussein Nada, general manager of therapeutic medicine department in Menufiya Health Affairs Directorate, said the patients suffered from complications due to kidney failure, in addition to the swine flu.
The results of the analysis of the samples belonging to both cases were submitted to hospital an hour after their death showing they had been infected with the H1N1 virus.
A third suspected case has been detained in Shebin al-Koam Hospital and its condition is stable despite suffering other chronic diseases.
The Health Ministry announced Monday that the number of deaths of swine flu amounted to 16 cases since last December, adding that Egypt has not recorded any human infection with the bird flu virus, or H5N1, since April 2013.
Many government officials, however, have a basic misunderstanding of the spread of the virus, mistakenly believing they are only spread from animals to humans, when in fact, the latest H1N1 virus has been capable of spreading from human to human since the recent global outbreak first surfaced in 2008.
Farid Gaafar, undersecretary of the Ministry of Veterinary Medicine in Kafr al-Sheikh, on Monday claimed that swine flu had been eliminated from the governorate in 2008 when all pigs were culled.
“We have no infections,” he said, adding that veterinary committees take regular samples from farms for analysis.
He called on bird breeders to report any cases of suspected infection so as to prevent the spread of bird flu, especially as winter is the right environment for the virus.
Edited translation from MENA and Al-Masry Al-Youm
