Spreading like wild fire around the world, the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus has engulfed one more life in Egypt, bringing the overall number of Egyptians who have died from disease to 14 since it appeared in the country last year in February.
The health ministry on Wednesday reported that a 15-year-old Egyptian girl who tested positive for the extremely infectious H5N1 bird flu virus has died in hospital due to respiratory failure on Tuesday.
"This case is the 14th death from 34 cases of bird flu infection since the disease appeared in Egypt in February 2006," the Egyptian health ministry said in a statement.
The teenager girl, identified as Marina Kamil Mikhail from Cairo's Shubra district, who was admitted to hospital in Cairo on Thursday (April 5) with a very high fever, succumbed to the virus despite receiving antiviral tamiflu and being placed on a respirator, the health officials said.
According to Amr Kandeel, who is the director of communicable diseases at the Ministry of Health, the girl died because she did not receive treatment soon enough due to her negligence for not reporting her symptoms when they first started appearing. And, because the girl did not enter hospital until a week to 10 days after the symptoms started, the treatment failed.
The girl, who according to health ministry got the H5N1 bird flu by coming in contact with birds who were infected with the virus, was treated with Tamiflu, a drug that is commonly used to treat the disease.
Officials say none of her family members, who were also being tested for the disease, was found to have the deadly form of bird flu.
Marina, the latest victim of bird flu in Egypt, had contracted the disease three weeks ago while buying chicken in a local market in Cairo, the World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman said.
However, according to the girl's family Marina did not come in contact with any sick poultry, thus how she contracted the virus is currently not known.
In Egypt, which accounts for the highest number of confirmed human bird flu cases outside Asia, the virus has engulfed 14 human lives since it first surfaced in the country's poultry a year ago, making it one of the worst-affected countries outside Asia. Out of a total of 34 humans who have caught bird flu in Egypt, 14 have died and 19 have recovered.
Meanwhile, a two-year-old girl, named Fatma Farouk Abdul Gawwad from central Egypt, who had tested positive for the virus on Thursday and was transferred to hospital a day before with high fever, is under treatment and Kandeel said she was in a good condition.
The most common way to get the bird flu in Egypt is from household birds, the ministry spokesman has stated. Most of the victims infected in Egypt are women, as well as some children, who had contact with live birds kept in the backyards of homes.
Egypt is the Arab world's most populous country with more than 73 million people and a major route for migratory bird, consumes about 800 million fowl every year. The country detected the first bird flu case in dead poultry Feb 17, 2006, which then spread to 20 of the country's 26 governorates, and reported the first human bird flu case last year on March 18.
Since the virus re-emerged in Asia in 2003, the deadly H5N1 strain has infected 288 people and killed 171 of them, mostly in Southeast Asia, and the outbreaks have been confirmed in around 50 countries and territories, according to data from the WHO.
The Egyptian government says its national health ministry along with UNICEF is conducting a vigorous campaign to combat the spread of the virus through vaccinations and raising awareness, yet cases continue to appear.
Countries with confirmed human deaths due to the H5N1 strain are: Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Laos, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam. Health experts fear the strain could mutate into a form that spreads easily among human, sparking a pandemic.
WHO, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) in collaboration with United States are looking into minimizing the risk of spreading of this disease and taking steps to avoid this to turn into a pandemic on a global level.
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