The vaccine is expected to be available on the Egyptian market within 18 months to two years.

The country also struggles to stem the spread of the virus by changing the habits of people living in rural areas, sometimes even in urban areas, where people are still keeping chickens, ducks, geese and pigeons in populated areas.

It is mostly young women who feed the fowl that contract the disease. Because of that many observers place the blame for the proliferation of the avian flu on people’s ignorance of the lethal virus and their reluctance to give up their domestic poultry.

Egypt uses more then one billion doses of anti-bird flu vaccine each year, which have been imported either by the state or the private sector since February 17, 2006 and France donated more than 24.5 million doses in last January.

Twenty-six people have died in Egypt from the H5N1 strain of bird flu since it was first identified in the Arab world's most heavily populated country in early 2006.

The Egyptian government decided last Wednesday to slaughter all pigs in the country immediately as a precaution to avert the fatal A/H1N1 virus which has hit different parts of the world even though No cases of swine flu, designated as influenza A(H1N1), have been reported in the country, as well as put all hospitals and quarantine center on alert to slow the spread of the virus in Egypt.

The World Bank estimates that a global pandemic resulting from the mutation of bird flu could cost $3 trillion and result in a nearly 5 per cent drop in world gross domestic product. And more than 70 million people could die worldwide in a severe pandemic.