Egypt reports 7th avian flu death
A 39-year-old woman has died from avian influenza in Egypt. The death is Egypt’s seventh from bird flu, and the first human fatality from the virus since May.
The woman was from the Nile Delta town of Samanoud, about 60 miles northwest of Cairo.
The woman’s infection was confirmed by the WHO earlier this month. According to the organization’s statement, the woman became ill on 30 September and was hospitalised on 4 October. She had suffered from pneumonia and been treated with oseltamivir.
Prior to contracting bird flu, she had slaughtered and plucked about a dozen ducks after some of the flock got sick and died.
The H5N1 virus first appeared in Egyptian poultry in February, and a series of human cases followed in April and May. Cases in poultry resurfaced in Egypt on 5 September, when an outbreak was reported on a farm in the southern province of Sohag, about 305 miles south of Cairo. Another outbreak was reported in late September among domestic birds at a home near Aswan, in southern Egypt, near the border with Sudan.
Reports indicate that most commercial poultry flocks in Egypt have been vaccinated against H5N1, but only around 20 percent of backyard birds have been immunised.
According to the latest WHO statistics, there have been 256 cases of bird flu worldwide, 151 of which have been fatal. The Egyptian woman’s death has apparently not yet been added to the confirmed total.
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