Human bird flu cases in Egypt reaches 11

Young people were the latest to fall victim to the bird flu in Egypt, which announced today that a 16-year-old girl had died of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus and an eight-year-old boy had tested positive.

Iman Mohammed Abdel Gawad died at Eshmon Hospital, where she had been admitted yesterday, health ministry spokesman Abdel-Rahman Shahin said.

“She had a high fever and she could hardly breath when she was examined,” Shahin said.

The boy, whose name was not released, is in a relatively stable condition and is receiving the medical treatment in Cairo, the Health Ministry spokesman said.

Both were from provinces in the Nile Delta, north of the capital, Cairo, and their families raised poultry for domestic consumption.

Abdel Gawad was from Menoufia and the boy hails from Qalyoubiya, a province north of Cairo where Egypt’s first known human case was detected.

Today’s announcements bring to 11 the number of human cases in Egypt, including three people who have died.

The only countries in the region to have recorded human cases of the virus are Iraq and Turkey, which has suffered the most serious outbreak with a total of 12 afflicted persons, including four fatalities, a Tuesday update on the World Health Organisation’s website said.

Outbreaks in birds have sparked mass culling in the aforementioned countries as well as in Israel and Jordan.

All of Egypt’s fatalities have been women, the previous two were in their 30s. Two people have been cured of the virus while six are receiving treatment.

Egypt is on a main route for migratory birds, at the crossroads between Asia and Africa. It discovered its first bird flu case in birds in February. It detected human cases the following month.

The ministerial committee in charge of combating the spread of the flu, headed by Health Minister Hatem el-Gabaly, said in a statement yesterday that 14 new cases in birds had been detected in six provinces and that all the birds involved there had been culled.

It also said 113 people had been examined and tested negative for the virus. In all, bird flu virus has been detected in 19 of Egypt’s 26 provinces, the statement said.