# 9628
A little over a week ago, in Egypt MOH: Three H5N1 Statements & Confirmation Of 17th Case, we learned that the Egyptian Ministry of Health had formally invited our Naval Medical Research Unit 3 (NAMRU-3), stationed in Cairo, to assist in their current H5N1 outbreak.
Billed as the `largest DoD overseas laboratory, with biosafety level 3 biocontainment space and field and hospital study sites located throughout Egypt.’ , NAMRU-3 is particularly well suited for this type of work, and their involvement is a good sign the Egyptian Government is taking this outbreak seriously.
Today the MOH has posted two H5N1-related items on their website. A description of two more H5N1 cases (although noticeably absent is an updated tally of cases), and a statement regarding NAMRU-3’s involvement.
First this translation of the NAMRU statement:
Meet Dr. Adel, Minister of health and population of infection today with the President of the US Naval Research Unit "alnamro 3", and the accompanying delegation to discuss the most important developments of bird flu and precautionary measures to be followed by the Ministry of health to control the spread of the disease.
The Health Minister emphasized the importance of a meeting with international development partners, for the transfer of expertise and support in responding to bird flu, noting that only American Naval Research Unit provides technical support to the Ministry of health to create a third level uses Laboratory Biosafety, and to be able to isolate the virus, in addition to the arrival of a delegation of experts from the Center for disease control in the United States, to provide technical assistance to Egypt to understand the disease, its causes and risk factors associated with it, as well as measures to avoid Infection.
Called "infection" of the importance of supporting studies that contribute to the development of the treatment and prevention of avian influenza, in particular to the possibility of manufacturing vaccines to prevent HIV infection.
For his part, the President of the US Naval Research Unit that is being analyzed for the bird flu virus, the control center for disease control in the United States, the findings suggest that there is no genetic mutation is important in the virus, as well as no signs of resistance to the drug Tamiflu.
Source: Media Center
The second statement has dropped the running tally of cases, recoveries, number in treatment, and deaths that have been a staple in earlier dispatches from the MOH, leaving us with far less clarity on the progress of this outbreak. This update also does not address a number of cases mentioned by the media over the past several days.
Health: central laboratory analysis results confirm positive لڤيروس H5N1 cases
The Ministry of health and population of the healing of a child of 10 years of Aswan, and positive two new injury بڤيروس H5N1 (bird flu), the first case of 60-year-old woman from Western Province and seized a hospital, abbassia-general condition of medium, and the latter for the 35-year-old woman from the governorate of Matrouh Morsi, was booked at a Damanhur-died.
Therefore calls upon the Ministry of health and population of citizens who handle poultry to go immediately to the nearest hospital to receive health service if they have flu symptoms, where the infected bird flu drug Tamiflu within the first 24 hours of the onset of symptoms increases the healing rates of disease and reduces the mortality and Health Ministry advised people who deal with poultry to be careful and prudent when dealing with birds that show symptoms of the disease and the need to take preventive action to prevent such infection cover The mouth and nose when handling poultry, wash hands with SOAP and water after handling birds and children not accompany poultry or slaughter premises as well as the need to separate from living birds.
Without an MOH tally, my `best guess’ is we are between 25 and 30 cases so far in the month of January. Hopefully this is one-time omission, and not a new reporting format by the MOH. We’ve essentially lost `real-time’ visibility of H7N9 in parts of China, it would be a shame if the same thing happened with H5N1 in Egypt.
Doing her best to keep some kind of logical track of these cases is Sharon Sanders, whose FluTrackers 2015 Global WHO & Ministries of Health Confirmed H5N1 Human Cases List carries both MOH, and local government confirmed reported cases.
A job that would become all the more difficult without updated MOH generated checksums to compare against.
