Egypt has taken all measures to ban poultry imports from bird- flu-stricken countries, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) quoted Egyptian Agriculture Ministry official Fattouh Moustafa Darwish as saying.

The Egyptian veterinary quarantine authority at Cairo Airport informed the airlines of the ban on birds and poultry imports from Germany and France, airport officials noted.

Last week, French Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the presence of a highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 virus on three young swans which died recently in northeastern France, while the German authorities raised the alert for bird flu from "moderate" to "high" after a number of wild birds were tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain in eastern Germany.

Egyptian Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation Amin Abbaza recently approved a national plan for fighting bird flu in Egyptian villages, which aimed to boost citizens' awareness of bird flu and measures to help prevent the spread of the disease.

Egypt reported its first case of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in dead poultry in February 2006 and the first human case in March of the same year. Among the 37 human cases of bird flu in the country up to now, 15 of them died.

Bird flu negatively affected the poultry industry and the economy as a whole in Egypt, where a large number of households depend on poultry as a main source of food and income.