Health ministry reports 13th human bird flu case

A new human case of avian influenza was announced on 2 May, bringing the total number of reported human infections in Egypt to 13. A 27-year-old woman was diagnosed with the disease on 1 May when she visited a Cairo hospital after showing symptoms associated with the avian flu, including high fever and breathing difficulties, according to a Ministry of Health press statement. “An X-ray revealed both her lungs were inflamed,” the statement read. The infection is the first human case of the potentially fatal virus to have been reported within the capital, Cairo. However, according to the health ministry, the woman contracted the disease in her home village in the Menoufiya governorate, some 80 km north of the capital, while handling sick domestic birds. “She was exposed to infected domestic birds in her village,” read the ministry statement. After being tested positive, she was immediately administered with Tamiflu capsules in an effort to blunt the efficacy of the virus. “Her condition at present is stable,” the statement noted. Members of her family, meanwhile, have all tested negative for the illness. The discovery comes only three days after a joint announcement by the health ministry and World Health Organization (WHO) that there were no longer any human cases in Egypt. Both organisations emphasised, however, on the continued possibility of new infections. “The threat posed by bird flu has by no means passed,” said Sayyid al-Abbasi, a media official at the health ministry, prior to the latest discovery. Egypt’s first human case was reported in mid-March. Since then, four people have died from the disease, while another eight have fully recovered. “Compared with other countries where H5N1 infections among humans have been found, the recovery rate in Egypt has been very good,” said Mona Yassin, WHO technical assistant for media and communications. On the whole, the survival rate for bird flu patients the world over has been approximately 50 percent, according to health ministry spokesman Abdel Rahman Shahine.