Roundup: Egypt Confirms First Human Death of Bird Flu

Roundup: Egypt confirms first human death of bird flu

by Ming Jinwei

CAIRO, March 18 (Xinhua) — Egypt announced on Saturday that a woman had died of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu, the first human death of bird flu in the populous north African country.

A 30-year-old woman from Nawa village in the governorate of Qalyubiya, some 40 km north of Cairo, died early Friday morning in a Cairo hospital where she had been treated for flu-like symptoms, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

Medical experts had detected the H5N1 bird flu virus in her blood samples, said the ministry, adding that more samples of the woman had been sent to Britain for further tests.

An official of the hospital in Cairo’s Abassiya district where the victim died told Xinhua that the woman was transferred to the hospital on Wednesday after treatment at a local hospital in Qalyubiya failed to allay her symptoms.

“The patient showed symptoms of fever and a shaking body, and she also complained about terrible pains all over her body,” said Mahmoud Abd Magued, director general of the hospital in Abassiya.

“We had suspected she might have caught bird flu and we used Tamiflu on her, but her situation was deteriorating rapidly,” he added, referring to the antiviral medicine which can be used to reduce some symptoms of the bird flu disease.

The Health Ministry statement also said that the woman had raised some chickens at her home despite an official ban since the country suffered its first bird flu outbreak among wild birds and poultry in February.

Some of the woman’s chickens had died before she showed flu- like symptoms and checked in a local hospital, it added.

Egyptian security forces have sealed off the woman’s village and health officials are taking samples from people who may have contacts with her or her poultry.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian national commission tasked of combatting bird flu started a meeting under Minister of Health and Population Hatem el-Gabali to discuss how to deal with the situation following the country’s first human death of the disease.

An Egyptian Health Ministry spokesman said that a state of emergency was declared in all Egyptian virology hospitals in anticipation of possibly more human bird flu cases.

As many as 107 hospitals across the country were ready to receive any suspected human case, spokesman Abdel Rahman Shahin was quoted by MENA as saying.

“The hospitals were supplied with the most sophisticated equipment and skilled doctors,” he said.

The spokesman added that authorities had taken strict measures on poultry breeding.

Egypt reported its first case of the H5N1 strain of bird flu on Feb. 17 and the government has since launched an aggressive campaign to bring the spread of the disease under control.

The deadly H5N1 strain has killed over 90 people worldwide since late 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

Most victims were infected after close contact with sick birds.

The virus currently can only jump from birds to humans, but scientists fear that it could mutate into a form capable of passing easily among humans and thus spark a global human flu pandemic which might kill millions.