Egypt reports 11th bird flu death

CAIRO (AFP) - An Egyptian woman died from bird flu overnight, bringing to 11 the number of people in the country to have succumbed to the disease, the heath ministry said.

The death comes only two days after the World Health Organisation in Geneva announced that a medication-resistant strain of the virus was responsible for the last two flu deaths in Egypt.

The latest victim, Warda Eid Ahmed, 27, from Beni Sueif south of Cairo, was hospitalised on January 13 in the Egyptian capital before being diagnosed with H5N1 four days later.

Like the previous two cases, Ahmed was treated with the frontline anti-flu drug Tamiflu, but still died.

Health ministry spokesman Abdel Rahman Shahin said however that eight of the 19 cases were treated successfully.

"The cases which were detected early and treated quickly were all cured. The 11 deaths were victims discovered to be at an advanced stage of the disease," he told the official MENA news agency.

Egypt, which has a population of about 72 million, is the country most affected by bird flu outside Asia with a total of 19 cases.

There has been increasingly alarm in Egypt's press over the flu, with a number of articles noting that the virus appears to be much more virulent this season.

While in last winter's flu season half of those affected were cured, this time around every one of the four people who contracted the disease has died, which could be linked to WHO's discovery of a drug resistant strain.

"Viruses with a genetic mutation, linked in laboratory testing to moderately reduced susceptibility to oseltamivir (Tamiflu), have been discovered in two persons previously reported with H5N1 infections in Egypt," the WHO said in a statement.

The patients, a 16 year-old girl and her 26 year-old uncle, died in hospital in late December, just days after they began receiving treatment with the drug, it added.

The WHO statement, however, maintained that there was no indication that the virus has become more contagious and was not recommending a change in Egypt's level of preparedness.

"Based on these considerations, the public health implications at this time are limited," the statement said. "At this time there is no indication that oseltamivir resistance is widespread in Egypt or elsewhere."

Egypt's health ministry last month launched a 10-million-dollar awareness campaign on television, radio and in newspapers. Meetings are also being held in rural areas to educate the population about the risks of bird flu.

The ministry has also asked for 150 million dollars from the government to prepare for a possible pandemic should the virus mutate into a form even more contagious to humans.

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