An Egyptian woman died yesterday of H5N1 bird flu after coming into contact with infected birds, the second death from the disease this year, a health ministry spokesman said.
Egypt has identified seven cases of the virus in people this year, including the two who died, Hosam Abdel Gaffar said.
In the latest case, the woman was 19 and died at a hospital in the southern region of Assiut, he said.
According to data from the World Health Organisation (WHO), from 2003 through until October 2, 2014, there have been 668 laboratory-confirmed human cases of H5N1 infection officially reported from 16 countries. Of these cases, 393 have died.
Egypt’s health ministry had announced in an earlier statement the discovery of the disease in a 30-year-old woman in the southern area of Minya, bringing to seven the number of confirmed Egyptian cases of the disease. Another of the victims was a three-year-old who had been exposed to infected birds and was doing well, it said.
The WHO warns that whenever bird flu viruses are circulating in poultry, there is a risk of sporadic infections or small clusters of human cases – especially in people exposed to infected birds or contaminated environments.
Human cases of H5N1 are rare, however, and the virus does not currently appear to transmit easily from person to person.
Egypt’s H5N1 cases have largely been found in impoverished rural areas in the south of the country, where villagers, particularly women, tend to keep and slaughter poultry in the home.
Meanwhile outbreaks of bird flu detected in the past two weeks in Germany, the Netherlands and Britain could be linked and may have been spread by migrating wild birds, the head of the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) said yesterday.
All three countries have reported cases of highly pathogenic bird flu which pose a risk to birds but not human health. The Netherlands detected the outbreak over the weekend and Germany earlier this month.
Both said it was the H5N8 strain, which has never been detected in humans but led to the culling of millions of farm birds in Asia, mainly South Korea, earlier this year. Dutch authorities decided to cull 150,000 chickens at the affected farm.
It was still unclear whether the cases found at a duck farm in England were the same strain. Britain’s chief veterinary officer said it was an H5 virus but not H5N1 which has killed hundreds of people.