Swine flu affects pigs. Evidence is slim that the recent outbreak of swine flu around the world was transmitted from pigs.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, it appears to be a people-to-people strain. Nevertheless, the disease's potential to be a pandemic, the absence of a cure and the dearth of knowledge about the strain itself is provoking a range of reactions across the globe--some panicky, some more measured. In the Middle East, where only one case has been reported so far (in Israel), the reaction is equally varied. Here's a breakdown, and the status of pig farming country-by-country.
The Health Ministry says that seven cases of swine flu had been reported in Algeria as of July 6, 2009. The two latest cases were reported on July 5. "Both cases involve people living in Constantine (east), who arrived on June 24 from Washington via London (England). These are two young men, aged 21 and 17 years on whom the first symptoms appeared on June 30 for the first and on 1 July for the other," the ministry
said in a statement.
Pig farming and the consumption of pork products is extensive in the country. The health ministry says it has a 6.5 million anti-viral vaccines on hand, 16 million face masks to hand out, if necessary, and 55,000 goggles.
Slaughtering the country's pigs did not have the desired effect. Egypt by mid-July 2009 was reporting 82 cases of swine flu, including tourists and expatriates returning home. Egypt's population is 80 million.
The government in May 2009 ordered the slaughter of all of the country's 300,000 to 350,000 pigs, which belong to Coptic Christians, who raise and consume pork. The move is a transparent swipe at Copt's economy. Egypt treats its Coptic Christians as second-class citizens and misses few opportunities either to humiliate them or to set them back economically and culturally. This is the latest example.
3. Iran: 200 Cases Reported
“While we have only had one confirmed case of swine flu, 200 others are suspected of the disease,” head of the Iranian Health Ministry's Centers for Disease Control Mohammad-Mehdi Gouya
said in mid-July 2009.
4. Iraq: 12 Cases, 1 Fatality
Iraq by mid-July 2009 was reporting 12 cases of swine flu, including seven that struck members of the national women's basketball team. The squad had been playing a tournament in Chicago before returning to Iraq in late June. At least one member of the U.S.-led multinational military force in Iraq had also been confirmed as having the H1N1 virus.
A 26-year-old man was Israel's first confirmed case of swine flu in early 2009. Ny July 2009, 846 cases had been reported in the country, but it was not until July 12 that an individual (a 21-year-old Swedish tourist) was hospitalized in the intensive care unit of a Tel Aviv hospital with the disease.
Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to Jews and Muslims. His solution was more offensive: "We should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu."
In its current identity, the swine flu obviously refers to no nationality or culture.
Israel has just one pig farm run by Jews, with more than 10,000 pigs, in the northern Negev, 30 minutes north of Beersheba. But it has many pig farms run by Christian Arabs.
6. Jordan: 23 Cases, 1 Fatality
Jordan hadn't reported any cases of swine flu through the middle of June, 2009. Less than three weeks later, it was reporting 23 cases--and 36 cases by July 19. The latest confirmed case was a 19-year-old Jordanian man who arrived in Amman from vacation in Cyprus, where 109 cases have been reported.
As of July 19, 2009, Lebanon's Ministry of Health was reporting that the country's swine flu cases had risen to 82, including 22 reported just since July 10. The World Health Organization declared on July 18 that it would quit reporting numbers. The ministry banned all imports of pork products. Pigs are raised on Lebanese farms and pork products consumed in large quantities by Christians and secular Muslims.
A Moroccan woman became Spain's first swine flu fatality in mid-July, 2009. In Morocco proper, 17 cases had been reported by mid-July but no fatalities.
Overwhelmingly Muslim Morocco tends to shun pork but only up to a point. Pork is popular among the country's 10 million or so annual tourists, who are a mainstay of the Moroccan economy. The country's swine industry totals some 5,000 pigs on seven farms, bred by a Christian, two Jews and four Muslims. In 2008, production was estimated at 270 tons of meat, yielding $1.6 million in revenue.
9. Pakistan: Unknown Number of Cases Due to Poor Reporting and Tracking
Three individuals with swine flu flew into Pakistan, with authorities' knowledge, in late April 2009, and were taken for treatment at Lahore's Sheikh Zayed Hospital. Rumors have flown that other infected travelers have entered the country. The rumors have not been confirmed, but Pakistan does a poor job of tracking and documenting swine flu cases.
Pakistan is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, but most Muslims adhere to a more moderate, Sufi-inspired strain of Islam. Pig farming has been gaining popularity in Pakistan's Punjab province, if only to produce more income.
"The total number of reported swine flu cases in the Kingdom reached 106" in early July 2009,
Arab News reported, "despite extensive measures adopted by the authorities to contain an outbreak."
The country does not raise pigs, which it considers "unclean" in accordance with Koranic dogma. But pork is served to foreigners in hotels. Health centers at airports and other entry points are screening passengers. A report that Saudi Arabia was banning travel from countries with outbreaks of swine flu, such as Mexico and the United States, is not confirmed. But authorities are spraying all aircraft and vehicles coming from infected areas, and, with the use of thermal cameras, screening passengers from those countries for elevated temperatures.
11. Turkey: Cases Double to 95 in Less Than Two Weeks
After weathering the worldwide pandemic rather well, Turkey began reporting swine flu cases in late spring and early summer. Then then number of reported cases rose dramatically--to 95 by mid-July 2009, with almost half those cases reported in the latter two weeks.
Pig farming was a mainstay of the Turkish agricultural economy. The country's more Islamism-minded government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, imposed new hygene laws in 2008 that forced most of the country's pig farms to close. Hygene was not the problem so much as Islamists' belief that pork is "unclean" (a belief contradicted by modern medicine).
Eight cases reported as of mid-July 2009, but the Gulf countries' stock markets, the UAE's included, have been jolted by the swine flu outbreak. The UAE is coordinating its response with other countries of the
Gulf Cooperation Council, should the flu reach the Emirates.
Emiratis themselves, who are almost exclusively Muslim but who are also minorities in their own country, neither farm nor consume pork products. But the UAE has two huge constituencies that do consume pork: tourists and foreign workers, especially migrant workers from south and east Asia. So the UAE imported about $11 million worth of pork products in 2008. The country isn't banning imports. But pork products have vanished from store shelves.
