JERUSALEM/ISRAEL: Chickens are taken for testing following fears of H5N1 strain.

Record ID: 398372

  • Title: JERUSALEM/ISRAEL: Chickens are taken for testing following fears of H5N1 strain.
  • Date: 16th January 2006
  • Summary: ENTRANCE TO EMERGENCY ROOM
  • Embargoed: 31st January 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA4PG8WX2IEYSNC9BFO1LVAAYFI
  • Story Text: An Israeli hospital tested a Palestinian for the bird flu virus on Monday (January 16) after chickens he tended died and he took ill.
    Israeli health authorities took away chickens from a farm in Tzur Baher near East Jerusalem to undergo tests following fears that the H5N1 strain had spread to the farm where they were being bred.
    The action was taken after the chicken farm owner was admitted to Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital with flu symptoms on Monday morning.
    Doctors said he is being tested for possible avian flu, but hospital officials they did not know when the results of the man's blood tests would be ready. The man was being kept in isolation, the hospital said.
    Israel's veterinary services also ran tests on five dead chickens he owned in Arab East Jerusalem and said results were likely only on Tuesday (January 17).
    There have been no reported cases of the bird flu virus in Israel or the Palestinian territories, although authorities have looked into several false alarms.
    The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the virus has killed 79 people since 2003 and infected nearly 150, but it has yet to confirm it was to blame for the Indonesian girl's death or two of the Turkish cases.
    Four children who lived in a rural area in Turkey died this month from avian flu.
    They were the first human victims reported outside east Asia since the virus's deadly strain, H5N1, re-emerged in 2003.
    The World Bank aims to raise $1.2 billion to fight bird flu, its vice president Jim Adams said on Monday, on the eve of a global donor conference in Beijing tasked with securing the resources needed to combat the deadly virus.
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