“Look, that’s where the swine flu is going to come from,” said a weary Marzouka Beshir, pointing to a pile of rubbish rotting under the blazing sun in Imbaba, a working class neighborhood in Cairo.
In their overcrowded areas, overflowing with litter, many like this 52-year-old Egyptian woman have trouble coming to grips with the dramatic measures taken by authorities to combat the A(H1N1) flu.
More than 900 cases of swine flu have been reported in Egypt, and two people have died from it.
PHOTO: AFP
But in a place where hygiene and basic services such as water and electricity are hardly guaranteed, simple instructions like “wash your hands with soap and water” as advised by the WHO and hammered by public television pose for most a serious challenge.
Egypt, whose 80 million people make it the Arab world’s most populous country, is already struggling with the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, and says it is not taking swine flu lightly.
The outbreak of the disease in other countries this past spring sparked a frenzy of combative measures by the Egyptian government.
Restrictions were placed on pilgrims traveling to and from Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s most important pilgrimage sites; schools and universities were shut down.
And the country’s 250,000 pigs were slaughtered in a step that drew heavy criticism.
The government later said that culling the pigs — an action deemed unnecessary by the WHO because pigs were not transmitting the disease to humans — was a public hygiene measure aimed at cleaning up pig breeding in general.
The pigs were feeding on organic waste, however. And now they are gone. The rubbish is piling up and the garbage men can’t keep up. The chronic problem of rubbish collection in the megalopolis of 18 million residents started getting worse after the decision.
And while there is no link between the rubbish and swine flu, the accumulation of waste certainly provides fertile ground for other diseases and discredits the government’s public health warnings.
“It’s a disaster; the pigs were eating the rubbish of all Egypt,” said Eid, 36, a freelance rubbish collector who, like many collectors, also sorted the rubbish for recycling.
Collector Said Mikhail, 74, smoking a shisha (waterpipe) at a local cafe, said: “I used to have pigs. My children earned a living; all was going well. Now the pigs are dead and here I am.”
“My children continue to pick up rubbish because they have no other means of making money, but the workload has increased and the revenue has gone down,” he said.
Egypt produces around 55,000 tonnes of waste every day, including 15,000 tonnes in Cairo alone, official figures say.
In Saft al-Laban, a poor Cairo district, litter is everywhere, near the school, the fruit stalls and the small hospital.
A foul stench from 1m-high piles of rubbish hovers over the area where residents can barely contain their fury.
“The smell is killing us,” Hala Shafiq said from under her black veil.
“This, this is nothing,” she said, shooting a look at the dozens of black plastic bags on the ground where dogs poked around looking for food.
“They talk about swine flu ... let them clean the streets,” she said.
“We can’t take it anymore,” chimed in Mahmud Riad, who owns a nearby restaurant surrounded by debris.
“There are no dumpsters so people throw the rubbish in the street and when the authorities come to pick it up, they leave half of it,” he said.
The government agency charged with cleaning up Cairo’s twin city of Giza admits it is swamped.
“We have neither the manpower, nor the equipment to pick up all the rubbish,” said one official who asked to remain anonymous, as three street sweepers in green outfits dumped torn garbage bags onto a truck already overflowing with litter.
“We are looking to recruit sweepers but people are ashamed of collecting rubbish,” the official said.
The problem has prompted some to take things into their own hands.
Amina al-Bendari, who teaches history at the American University in Cairo, spent two hours with a few neighbors picking up the rubbish on their street.
“We are still paying the [freelance rubbish collectors], but they don’t come every day anymore,” she said. “They killed the pigs. What is the alternative now?”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS