As if the Middle East hasn’t already had problems with serious infectous diseases, such as Mid East Respiritory Syndrome (MERS),   an even more deadly virus, Ebola, may now be on its way there as well. Ebola is one of the world’s worst virus scourges and is now on the verge of becoming an international pandemic, according to World Health Organization (WHO) officials.

The virus, which originated in West Africa and has a 64% death rate, could be spreading from the three African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leon where it has until now been “confined” to.

According to a July 27 WHO Ebola virus update a total of 1,201 cases of Ebola have been reported in these countries, resulting  in 672 deaths. The death count is now believed to have surpassed 700, according to reports issued Friday, August 1.

The disease has already killed  Sierra Leone’s top Ebola treatment doctor, Shiek Umar Kahn.  Two Americans, involved in treating Ebola patients, also became ill. The two Americans, Dr. Kent Brantly and an unidentified humanitarian aid worker, are to be flown in a special flight to Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital in the USA; where they will be placed in a sealed high security isolation ward.

The possibility of an international Ebola pandemic became even more likely when a Liberian American man, Patrick Sawyer, became ill while on a flight from Liberia to Lagos, Nigeria, where he had been scheduled to attend  a conference. There were 59 passengers and crew members on this flight, all of whom may have been infected by Mr. Sawyer. They are now in the process of being located in order to be  tested for the disease. This process has been made very complicated by the fact these people may themselves have infected hundreds or thousands more in airports and elsewhere.

The Ebola virus (photo eloquent in its structure) and which has no known cure,  is said to be very contagious and is easily transmitted from person to person, via the infected person’s blood or body fluids.

The incubation period of Ebola virus takes about 6 to 8 days before symptoms began to appear. Early symptions include fever, severe headaches, joint and muscle aches, chills and weakness. As the disease progresses, more serious symptoms occur, including nausea and vomiting, diarrhea (often with bloody stools), red eyes, raised rash, chest pains and cough, stomach pain and severe weight loss.

Bleeding from the eyes, nose, mouth, vagina and rectum, as well as Internal bleeding, can also occur.

Beside blood, body fluids that spread the disease include sweat, semen, and stools.

It is not known if some of the passengers on Mr. Sawyer’s flight were from North Africa or the Middle East. The possibility that they were should already be ringing alarm bells in many Middle East countries; especially Saudi Arabia, where the annual Hajj pilgrimage will begin on October 2, 2104. The Hajj draws as many as 3 million Muslim pilgrims from all over the globe; and has in the past been the subject of other infectious diseases, including Swine Flu.

There is a strong possibility that the Ebola virus could very well show up during the 5 day pilgrimage; and as a result be spread to other countries even faster. As one communicable disease researcher stated, regarding the present Ebola outbreak: “We may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg.”

Read more on deadly viruses in the Middle East:

Bats Blamed for Deadly Middle East Respiratory Virus
Deadly Middle East Corona Virus May Come from Camels
Swine Flu Death Toll in the Middle East Region

Photo of Ebola epidemic scare newspaper headlines by VOA/AP:
Photo of Ebola virus , by Reuters/Yahoo News

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Health officials in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) are calling on residents to get vaccinated against the H1N1 virus (“swine flu”) after 25 deaths in recent weeks.Over 700 infections of H1N1 have been reported in the West Bank and 20 in the Gaza Strip, and officials say the number of recent H1N1-related deaths is almost certainly underreported.

“The virus has claimed 25 lives to date, three of them in Gaza, and we are in the midst of vaccinating,” Asad Ramlawi, general director of primary health care at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, told IRIN, the UN news agency.

He said 25,000 people had been vaccinated as part of a regular programme over the last few months, and an additional 25,000 have been vaccinated since the outbreak.

“Right now we are targeting patients at risk of heart disease, diabetes, blood diseases and of course, pregnant women. We are seeing a good response to our efforts to raise awareness [of the importance of] getting vaccinated,” he said, saying they had good stocks of the vaccine in reserve.

Young children, babies and infants under five, old people and pregnant women are considered to be at the highest risk of contracting H1N1, an infection caused by an influenza virus believed originally to have infected the lungs of pigs.

The latest surge of cases was detected in the West Bank in early December 2012 but the first cases in Gaza came to light in mid-January, with reported deaths in the Jenin, Qalqilya and Hebron regions, according to Palestinian health officials.

In the 2009 pandemic, dozens of Palestinians died from H1N1.

And elsewhere in the region?

In Israel, a twenty-eight-year old woman died on Monday night of H1N1 at a hospital in Beer Sheba.

Previously, the only reported H1N1 death was of a three-year-old boy in the city of Petach Tikva in mid-January, the first reported in the country since the winter of 2009- 2010 when 96 Israelis died.

Since then, a large-scale vaccination campaign has been carried out. Four unvaccinated women have been hospitalized with H1N1 in the past few weeks.

Israeli Ministry of Health spokeswoman Einav Shimron- Greenbaum told IRIN H1N1 in Israel is “at a medium level as of now; we are aware of the reported deaths in the PA [Palestinian Authority] and are monitoring the situation, as we are with worldwide reports of the situation.”

Nine confirmed deaths were reported in Yemen in the last two months; three deaths in Iraq; two in Jordan; and 20 non-fatal infections in Tunisia.

In 2009 the World Health Organization declared that the H1N1 strain of the flu virus had become pandemic. It went on to cause the deaths of at least 18,500 people before the pandemic was declared over in August 2010.

According to statistics, about 500 people die from the common flu every year in Israel.

::IRIN news

Image of a sick child, Shutterstock

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Now considered a seasonal flu for which vaccinations are administered, H1N1 swept through the globe in 2009, killing up to 18,000 people. On 10 August 2010, the World Health Organization announced the end of the H1N1 pandemic, but at least 225 people have been infected in the most recent outbreak in the Palestinian territories.

The PA Health Ministry said in a statement that 25,000 residents have been inoculated this year and that they have “the necessary medicines, testing kits and equipment to deal efficiently with the spread of the virus.”

The Israeli government is watching the outbreak carefully, but no drastic measures are planned, according to The Jerusalem Post. Dozens of Israelis and Palestinians died during the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak that was first discovered in Mexico.

It was also because of this outbreak that Egypt culled all of the Zabaleen pigs, which used to process Cairo’s organic waste.

While health officials appear to have a grip on H1N1, scientists have warned that global warming makes conditions more amenable to superbugs that will become increasingly resistant to antibiotics, which means that we should expect further outbreaks in the future.

Meanwhile, research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) reveals that immunization against the life-threatening influenza virus may not be panacea.

:: Jerusalem Post

Image of a sick child, Shutterstock

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Pig abuse makes the headlines in Israel, a place where pork is strictly off-limits to most people.

A few years ago we covered the rampant Swine Flu that prompted Egypt’s cull of 300,000 pigs to “protect” people there against the virus. But the cull was likely just a matter of politics: The issues surrounding the raising of swine in countries where pork is religiously forbidden, including countries like Israel, raises a big question mark regarding the future of domestic and wild pigs in this region.  Although swine flu. or H1N1, did not become a massive world-wide pandemic in the end, there was still much concern during the 2009 Hajj religious pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia who might have been infected with the H1N1 virus. Now new pig abuse criticism pops up in Israel.

Swine flu is not the only issue surrounding the raising of domestic swine, often in polluting and overcrowded conditions. The Jerusalem Post reports that a large domestic swine farm in Israel’s Western Galilee town of Mi’ilya were found to be raising more than 2,000 pigs in exceptional filthy and abusive conditions. These conditions include severe overcrowding in which injured pigs were receiving no veterinarian treatment, and were often left lying in manure sludge along with carcases of pigs that had already succumbed.

Like other neighboring countries, including Egypt, Israel’s dominant religion, Judaism, forbids the eating of pork; and this also is true for the country’s Muslim citizens, who constitute Israel’s largest non-Jewish minority. Christians and Israel’s large migrant community do support the pork market.

Although Israel’s Environment Ministry has issued orders to close the Araf pig farm, the farm is still open and not much had been done to alleviate the suffering of the poor animals being raised there in grossly overcrowded and filthy conditions.

Even though the maximum fine for severe abuse to animals is up to thee years in prison and a NIS 202,000 fine (About $50,000 USD), the owners of this horrible place made consider the monetary part of the fine as simply a “cost of doing business” as revenues generated from this enterprise are around NIS 70 Million  ($17,500,000) a year!

In addition to concern by environmentalists, animal rights groups have also joined the protest against the farm where animal abuses in addition to the filthy overcrowding include such acts as tail chopping or “docking” and castration of  males that is often done with any kind of anesthesia. Another environmental worry is manure filled  pig sludge leaking into area streams as well as polluting farm land.

Despite Israel’s Jewish and Muslim populations, a considerable amount of pork products is consumed annually, especially by Israelis of immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union. There are no shortage of stores selling pork; and one of the country’s largest supermarket chains, Tiv Taam, readily sells both fresh pork products and processed deli meats made from pork.

Last May, the animal rights activist organization Let the Animals Live petitioned Israel’s High Court against the abuse suffered by pigs in farms such as the aforementioned one. In a prepared statement the NGO wrote: “The surprise of Agriculture Ministry inspectors is astounding, since so often documents of pig abuse pass through their hands.Abuse is made possible because the Agriculture Ministry refuses to set a minimum standard for holding pigs, as the office is charged to do under the Animal Welfare Law.”

We might hope this and other protests on the animal’s behalf will help alleviate their suffering. But with so much money being made by these pig  farms, it will be hard to close all of them, if any are closed at all.

More on pigs and diseases like swine flu in the Middle East:
Swine Flu and the Future of Israeli Pigs – Domestic and “Wild”
Swine Flu and Other Challenges of the Hajj Pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2009
Egypt to Cull 300,000 Pigs in Response to Swine Flu Virus
A Fine For Creating a Polluting Pig Sty in Israel

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Animal cases of avian flu in Bala village in the Tul Karem area of the West Bank, Palestinian Authority northeast of Tel Aviv, have been confirmed, and some 250,000 chickens culled, according to officials. Bala is a major egg and poultry-producing area and part of its produce is smuggled into Israel due to higher prices there, according to Israeli Agriculture Ministry officials. ”We are always on the lookout for poultry and eggs smuggled into Israel from the Palestinian Authority (PA) but now we are tightening supervision at the PA-Israel crossings,“ the spokesperson’s unit at the Israeli Health Ministry told IRIN. Israeli veterinary services assisted the PA by transferring the drugs needed for the culling, said Shalom Simchon, Israel’s minister of agriculture, and he called on international organizations to compensate Palestinian farmers for their huge losses. PA forces surrounded Bala to prevent smuggling of poultry during the culling.

Cases of avian flu were also confirmed in Kibbutz Ein Gedi in Israel, on the Dead Sea shore, on 7 May in a zoo; all birds were culled and the Israeli Agriculture Ministry is closely monitoring the area. Under international law, Israel is obliged to cease exports of poultry and poultry products for one month following the discovery of avian flu. Animal avian flu cases have been discovered three times in Israel since 2006. In all cases birds were culled and no human casualties reported.

::IRIN

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The swine flu is taking its toll in the Middle East, not immune to the deadly virus that tends to attack younger, healthier people, and those who are pregnant. (For other reasons, it’s also decimated the pig population in Cairo, which had been composting the city’s organic waste.)

In America, and Canada, large numbers of people are opting for the swine flu shot – to be on the safe side.

Yet, in countries like Israel, where the swine flu shot is now being offered, only a small part of the population is opting for protection, mainly healthcare workers. According to an Israeli researcher, only those people who are networked in public positions, or who contact many people in a day or in the week, should be immunized. Because there could be other risks by getting the shot, which has yet to be proven safe over the long term. Looking at the model of bacteria behaviour, here’s more on the research.

Bacteria inhabited our planet for more than 4 billion years before humans showed up, and they’ll probably outlive us by as many eons more. That suggests they may have something to teach us. New research from Tel Aviv University bacteria expert Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy, grounded in the study of bacteria, presents compelling evidence to suggest there may be good reasons why most people should not automatically opt for the swine flu H1N1 shot.

In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), Prof. Ben Jacob uses the decision-making of bacteria, an analogue of “game theory,” as a model to make his case.

“Unlike our health authorities, bacteria would never panic,” he says. “Bacteria don’t follow the media or watch cable news. Instead, they send chemical messages to each other — in a colony 100 times larger than the earth’s human population — to make their decisions. And based on what we’ve seen in bacterial colonies, I know they would be suspicious committing to swine flu shots. They wouldn’t opt for a colony wide vaccination,” Prof. Ben Jacob concludes.

The prisoner’s dilemma

The new research, done in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Schultz, a postdoctoral fellow at TAU, and Profs. José Onuchic and Peter Wolynes at the University of California/San Diego, not only provides a paradigm for assessing responses to health emergencies, it may also provide investors with insight into how to manage stock portfolios.

In the PNAS paper, the scientists explored how microscopic creatures living in large colonies decide their fate in adverse times under complicated and life threatening conditions. They found that bacteria communicate through chemical signals and reach decisions in sophisticated ways, using an elaborate network of genes and proteins to calculate complex possibilities, as in game theory.

In essence, in life or death situations, bacteria employ more advanced tactics than those used to solve the classic problem known as “the prisoner’s dilemma.” This may account for their colony’s resilience. In the classic problem, two prisoners are asked to betray each other. If one testifies against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent one (the prisoner loyal to his friend), will get 10 years in prison. If both remain silent (and cooperate with each other), they are sentenced to only one year in jail. If each one betrays the other, both will be sentenced to 5 years in jail. The temptation, of course, is to betray — but neither prisoner can be sure what the other will say, and could risk five years in jail.

In the case of bacteria, there are not two but hundreds of billions of participants with a limited time to decide whether to deal with a stress situation by all turning into spores. Each bacterium has to decide whether it will cooperate or not. Unlike the prisoners, there is a clock ticking away. And each bacterium must quickly send out chemical messages to its peer cells about its intentions.

Bacteria “usually don’t lie” about their own plans, Prof. Ben Jacob says, but the minority that do have a chance of surviving won’t cheat to postpone the decision of others. The scientists’ new article presents a model that decodes how bacteria use the gene-and-protein networks to calculate risks and the game theory principles they employ.

Maintaining a delicate balance

Americans uncertain about getting the H1N1 flu shot because they’ve heard about potentially dangerous side effects also face the prisoner’s dilemma. Perhaps it’s better not to get the shot, one may think, because if everybody else is vaccinated, the virus will be wiped out before it reaches me.

“The simple rule we learned from bacteria is that anybody who has to make an important decision — especially one of life and death at times of stress — should wait to see the trend of changes, process the risks and odds in depth, and only then decide,” says Prof. Ben-Jacob.

Based on what he and his colleagues learned about bacteria, he imagines that bacteria might offer this counsel regarding the flu shot: “They might suggest that only people who have widespread and intense contact with many others, such as business travellers and teachers, should get the shot. Those who are most likely to spread the virus should be vaccinated.

“Bacteria don’t take risks like we do and the results have paid off. They are super-successful, more than any creature on earth. They wouldn’t abuse the stock market, and would never invest beyond their means. I am also pretty sure most would not rush to get the flu shot, if given the choice,” he concludes. “They know how to keep a delicate balance.”

::AFTAU

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One of the biggest concerns to Saudi Arabian health authorities has unfortunately become a reality at this year’s Hajj pilgrimage, now underway in Islam’s holiest cities of Mecca and Medina.

This year’s pilgrimage, which began on Saturday, November 21, has already claimed at least four lives to the H1N1 influenza (swine flu) virus, according to an article published in Al Jazeera.

The article , which came out last Saturday, at the beginning of week long event, noted that despite efforts being made by 15,000 Health Ministry workers to screen out persons who might be infected by the H1N1 virus, 4 people have already succumbed to the disease and that another 4 were in hospital in “critical condition.”

Another 20 pilgrims had become infected, but had fully recovered. A Health Ministry spokesman was quick to point out that all four persons who died, 3 in Medina and one in Mecca, all suffered from serious illnesses ranging from cancer to various respiratory illnesses.

None of the four people who died had taken a preventive H1N1 vaccine. But bearing this in mind, it is very likely the vaccine might not have been available to them as they came from countries which included Morocco, Sudan, and Nigeria.

Health workers are now trying to determine whether these individuals already had flu symptoms when they arrived, some of them several days before the formal pilgrimage began.

The deaths were a call for alarm in order to find out whether the various screening methods for finding people with tell-tale symptoms were in place when these people arrived. These include thermal cameras which can detect a person with higher than normal temperatures, which were installed at both airports and seaports, where most of the Hajj pilgrims enter the Kingdom.

These cameras were first used in quantity during the previous SARS disease outbreak  that began in China in November, 2002, and spread to a number of countries before dissipating in July, 2003.

Participants have now reached the high point of the pilgrimage, the rite of “witnessing the Prophet” at Mt. Arafat; and most likely a few more participants may have died from complications brought on by the virus by now as well.

For this reason, Saudi health authorities are asking pilgrims not to eat in public places and are making efforts to distribute face masks and disinfectants. Concern among Saudi health officials in regards to the H1N1 virus was noted earlier this month in our Green Prophet article dated November 8 in which Saudi Health Ministry and American Center for Disease Control officials were working together to provide better screening methods for detecting persons who might be infected with the disease.

Still, it must be taken into account that with more than 3 million people participating in this year’s Hajj, it is virtually impossible to check everyone arriving as many come by bus and by private car. Due to so many people being brought together for the week long event, a number of them are killed during stampedes (especially during the rite of Stoning the Devil) and by acts of violence.

The concern by health officials has been made even more trying due to difficult weather conditions during the week that has included moderate to heavy rain showers and lower than average temperatures.

We at Green Prophet wish the pilgrims a healthy conclusion to this very important religious rite that must be undertaken by religious Muslims at least once in a lifetime; as well as a happy Eid al Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) holiday at the pilgrimage’s conclusion.

More on greening your Hajj:
Swine Flu Concerns for Hajj Pilgrims
Go To Medina and Mecca on Fast Train
Saudi Adds Eco-Guards to Its Police Force

Photo via mo7amaD

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Not long ago Green Prophet reported the Egyptian government’s plan to cull the country’s 300,000 pigs as panic of the swine influenza spread across the world.

Now the effects of the massive cull, which was criticised by international agencies and within Egypt itself, are being felt – by both Egyptians who rely on pigs for their livelihoods, and the environment which has been burdened with thousand of extra tons of rotting organic waste that was previously fed to the pigs.

According to a report in the International Herald Tribune, the government said that the cull was not just to prevent swine flu (which had not been detected in Egypt), but also to clean up the zabaleen, Christian Egyptians who make a living from the unenviable task of sorting and collecting Cairo’s garbage, including feeding food waste to their pigs.

The authorities say it’s an attempt to allow the zabaleen (a word that shares the same root as the Hebrew for garbage, zevel) to live in more sanitary conditions, a claim rejected by the zabaleen and their supporters.

“They [the government] don’t have a good understanding of what this means to the livelihood of the rubbish collectors,” says Syada Greiss, a member of Parliament and chairwoman of the Association for the Protection of the Environment.

But killing the swine also means killing off a system for recycling organic waste which dates back to the 1940s. Associations representing the zabaleen estimate that they collect 6,000 of trash a day, 60% of which is food waste.

So where will all the rotting fruit and veg go? “They expect me to pay to have a carter take this away,” says Faris Samir, 22, whose extended family of 33 lost their income when the police took away their pigs.

“Forget it. I will throw it anywhere.”

Egypt’s short-sightedness and paucity of recycling infrastructure reminds me of Israel’s long-forgotten national composting system (see Alon Tal’s seminal Pollution in a promised land). The scheme once transformed food waste into agricultural fertiliser until it was scrapped decades ago when polluting synthetic nitrogen fertiliser was considered “cheaper” than the organic option.

The only option for dedicated Israeli composters is to seek out one of the handful of community-run compost sites – an irony when the skyrocketing price of artificial fertiliser (linked to fossil fuels) is putting to rest the myth of “cheap” industrial farming.

 :: Cleaning Cairo, But Taking a Livelihood, IHT.

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