DUBAI, 8 April 2007 (IRIN) - DUBAI, 8 April 2007 (IRIN) - CONTENTS  

EGYPT: 27th human case of bird flu detected EGYPT: Bird flu awareness and reporting measures are improving IRAQ: NGOs urge more aid for displaced families in south IRAQ-JORDAN: Iraqis cause black market for jobs IRAQ-SYRIA: Call for aid as Iraqi refugees' misery compounds IRAQ: Children suffer bad water diseases Fae'ek Ahmed, Iraq, "Helping people can be dangerous" Um Mustafa Bakr, Iraq "I can't find medicines for my son's convulsions" ISRAEL-OPT: Schoolbooks say 'fighting Israel is Islamic duty' LEBANON: Campaigners push electoral reform to end sectarian politics LEBANON: Overcrowded and mismanaged prisons criminalising young offenders HORN OF AFRICA-YEMEN: Thirty-five migrants dead, 113 missing YEMEN: Tuberculosis on the decline

EGYPT: 27th human case of bird flu detected

The 27th human case of avian influenza has been detected in Egypt, health officials say, despite recent government efforts to curtail the problem. Sayyid al-Abbasi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, told IRIN on Monday that the latest case was a three-year-old girl from Aswan, southern Egypt. She tested positive for the H5N1 subset of the virus on Sunday.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70928

EGYPT: Bird flu awareness and reporting measures are improving

Bird flu awareness and reporting measures in Egypt are improving, and patient recovery rates are rising, health specialists say, because of better planning and co-operation between international bodies and the Egyptian government in tackling the virus.

This is despite the fact that 29 people in Egypt have been infected by the virus since spring 2006, 13 of whom died.

The latest cases of human infection of H5N1, the avian influenza virus, were reported on Monday when a six-year-old boy from Qena in the Nile Valley, and a five-year-old boy from Minya province, were tested positive for the virus and admitted to hospital.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71022

IRAQ: NGOs urge more aid for displaced families in south

Nearly a million displaced people in Iraq's increasingly volatile southern provinces are in urgent need of food, medicines and municipal services, local officials and NGOs say. Aid workers have called on international humanitarian organisations and the central government to provide more assistance to the growing numbers of displaced in the south of the country.

"Najaf, Kerbala and Basra provinces, in particular, are greatly suffering with a continued increase in displacement. There are dozens of families arriving every day at camps for the displaced, causing a lack of essential needs such as food and health care," said Ali Fakhouri, a spokesman of Najaf provincial council.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70944

IRAQ-JORDAN: Iraqis cause black market for jobs

The huge influx of Iraqis in Jordan over the past year has caused the creation of an illegal employment market that is undercutting the wages of ordinary Jordanians and sometimes robbing them of their jobs, local officials say.

In addition, some Jordanians blame incoming Iraqis for property price rises, and increasingly overburdened education and health systems.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71004

IRAQ-SYRIA: Call for aid as Iraqi refugees' misery compounds

Life for Ahlam al-Mulla, her husband and three children was meant to get easier after they fled their home outside Baghdad for the safety of Syria. In July 2004, the 42-year-old Sunni was kidnapped on her way to work for the Iraqi Help Centre - a US-sponsored welfare organisation. The militia men who took her accused her of being an agent of the US occupation. They beat her for eight days, she said.

"My husband had to pay US $50,000 to get me released, otherwise I would have been killed," Ahlam told IRIN in her bare living room in Damascus. "I was absolutely terrified."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70915

IRAQ: Children suffer bad water diseases

Mohammed Hussein Shureida, 40, sets aside a huge portion of his monthly income to buy water from private tankers and protect his family from waterborne diseases that can result from drinking Iraq's tap water.

"I nearly lost my six-year old son last summer as he developed acute diarrhoea from the bad water we were drinking," said Shureida, a taxi driver from the Baghdad slums of Sadr city. "Medicines were not easy to get, causing my son to suffer a lot until he recovered and since then we decided not to drink tap water," added the father-of-three.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70920

Fae'ek Ahmed, Iraq, "Helping people can be dangerous"

Fae'ek Ahmed, 30 works for a local Iraqi NGO that has been helping displaced families by providing them with essential supplies such as food, clean water, clothes and medicines in the capital, Baghdad, and in neighbouring provinces.

Single but with parents to support, he lives in fear of being killed after receiving death threats from unknown sources.

"Helping people can be dangerous in my country. Every day when I go to a displaced camp to deliver aid, I have a premonition that something bad will happen to me," he said.

http://www.irinnews.org/HOVReport.aspx?ReportId=70914

Um Mustafa Bakr, Iraq "I can't find medicines for my son's convulsions

Um Mustafa Bakr is a 33-year-old mother-of-three who is desperately looking for treatment for her son, Omar. The two-year-old has been suffering serious bouts of epilepsy-induced convulsions for the past year.

"I'm tired of going to public hospitals in search of treatment for my son. He's just a baby and is suffering from a condition that could kill him," she said.

http://www.irinnews.org/HOVReport.aspx?ReportId=71005

ISRAEL-OPT: Schoolbooks say 'fighting Israel is Islamic duty'

Palestinian schoolchildren are being taught to hate Israel and to see fighting Israelis as a holy Islamic duty, according to a report by an Israeli media monitoring group.

New Palestinian 12th grade textbooks published last December deny Israel's existence and teach 11-year-olds that the Palestinian struggle is part of an overall war between Muslims and their enemies, according to a Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) report entitled "From nationalist battle to religious conflict".

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71065

LEBANON: Campaigners push electoral reform to end sectarian politics

Electoral reform would combat the sectarianism that blights Lebanon and provide an exit from its political crisis, NGOs say. Three civil society groups have stepped up a campaign for the adoption of a draft electoral law they say would create a stable democracy that is less prone to shocks. A four-month stand-off between the Sunni-dominated government and its opponents, led by Shia political party Hezbollah, has raised fears of civil war.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71063

LEBANON: Overcrowded and mismanaged prisons criminalising young offenders

Khalil was only 15 years old when he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for murdering his friend. He has spent the past three years in the juvenile wing of Roumieh prison, 18km north-east of Beirut. It is one of Lebanon's more notorious jails.

"Sometimes, I cannot sleep; I only think. I'm so afraid and lonely, and I try to survive each day at a time, otherwise, I would not last in this place," said the teenager, whose family name IRIN cannot publish because he is a minor.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70917

HORN OF AFRICA-YEMEN: Thirty-five migrants dead, 113 missing

At least 35 migrants were confirmed dead and 113 others missing and presumed dead after making a perilous sea voyage from Somalia to Yemen, a Somali community leader told IRIN on Monday. The migrants had left from the Somali port of Bossaso and crossed the Gulf of Aden. The bodies of those that died were found at Bir Ali in the southern province of Shabwa.

Sadat Mohammed, Head of Refugee Affairs in the Somali Community in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, said the incident occurred on 22 March as knife-wielding traffickers forced 450 Somalis and Ethiopians off four boats into stormy seas off the Yemeni coast.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70960

YEMEN: Tuberculosis on the decline

Although Yemen has the second highest tuberculosis (TB) mortality rate in the Middle East, after Iraq, specialists say the disease is on the decline because of a concerted awareness campaign and training programmes for health workers.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70966

IRIN news