A Reuters article from 2004:
Egyptians unable to afford drugs that cost
eight times the average annual wage are resorting to a bogus ritual with
live pigeons to try to cure a serious liver disease, doctors said on
Wednesday.
The alternative treatment for hepatitis C emerged about a year ago and
has become increasingly popular, they said. The ritual is not
traditional and its origins are a mystery.
“The treatment involves removing the feathers from the backside of a
pigeon and holding it on the patient’s navel until the bird dies,” said
Mona Abu-Zekry, a specialist in infectious diseases.
Practitioners say the birds die after sucking the virus into their own
bodies. Abu-Zekry said they secretly choke the birds to death while
holding them against their patients.
“It’s a fallacy. The people doing this are trying to make money from
people who don’t know any better,” she said.
Egypt suffers one of the world’s highest hepatitis C infection rates,
the doctors said. The virus, which is spread by contact with infected
blood, affects about 14 percent of the population and can cause liver
failure and cancer.
Soheir Sheir, a former head of internal medicine at Ain Shams University
in Cairo, said the cost of a 24-week course to treat hepatitis C was
45,000 Egyptian pounds ($7,323).
The United Nations Development Program’s figure for Egyptians’ average
annual income was 5,538 pounds in 2001.