الفهرس 
Epidemiology of Influenza VirusOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Avian influenza (AI) is an infectious disease of birds caused by type A strain of the influenza virus. The disease was first identified in Italy more than 100 years ago, and now occurs allover the world in poultry and also in humans.
Avian influenza (H5N1) is becoming one of the serious public health threats in Egypt, which has the highest known cluster of human bird flu cases outsides Asia, with 83 cases and 27 deaths since the virus first surfaced in Egyptian poultry in February 2006 .
Very few data exist that reveals current level of awareness of avian influenza and household behavior related to poultry breeding in Egypt. In an attempt to gain a better understanding of this situation, the current study aimed to assess the existing knowledge, attitudes and various practices undertaken by household poultry raising in rural Egypt. This will help in the provision of baseline diagnostic data for communication and health education strategies targeting these high risk groups.
This descriptive study was implemented in Tosfa and Kafer Tosfa villages in Qalyubia Governorate, which are selected randomly. A group of 500 housewives were selected randomly from these villages (as 250 from each).
Data were collected by interviewing housewives through home visiting using a questionnaire covering the following items:
• Socio demographic characteristics.
• Environmental home condition questionnaire.
• Knowledge questionnaire.
• Knowledge about practice questionnaire.
• Attitude questionnaire.
The current study revealed the following key findings:-
• All the participants heard about AI, and the main sources of their knowledge was radio, TV (90.8 %) , the least common source of their knowledge was newspapers (0.4%) and the total knowledge score is satisfactory in 52.2 % of the participants.
• Regarding to attitude, 79.4% of the participants think that the disease is serious, 66.6 % think that they shouldn’t stop bird breeding in order to prevent the disease and the total attitude score is negative in 69.8 % of the participants .
• Considering practice, 86.4% of the participants breed birds in their houses, %50.9 % of breeders breed their birds in uncovered places, 49% of the participants follow all biosecurity measures in preparing poultry for eating, 46.1% change their clothes and shoes after dealing with their birds , 26.9% of breeders are wearing masks when dealing with their birds and 22.7% wearing gloves. Of the breeders 53.7 % vaccinate their birds in the veterinary unit and the total knowledge about practice score is poor in 88% of the participants.
from the results of this study, the following are recommended:
• Increasing the health educational messages provided through TV as it is a very effective method of health education.
• Separating the pigs’ farms from the people houses is essential to prevent the genetic reassortment and prevent creating new pandemic strain.
• Integrating of governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) efforts to provide continuous health education at breeders homes for training them on healthy practice when dealing with birds.