She has been given Tamiflu which should improve her chances of recovering...

Last week we reported on a new case of bird flu in Egypt and this week much to the concern of Egyptian health officials in the country another case has been confirmed. The new case of avian influenza is the 27th case and involved a small girl of only three years old who comes from an area called Aswan in the south of Egypt. The little girl was admitted to hospital last Thursday but the actual confirmation that she had the H5N1 bird flu virus did not come through until Sunday.

In the meantime however she has been given Tamiflu which should improve her chances of recovering greatly. At present her condition in the hospital is stable and the health authorities in Egypt are testing all members of her family who have had contact with her for the bird flu virus also. It is clear that she contracted the illness after having come into direct contact with infected birds which are very much a feature of that part of Egypt. There have been 2 other cases of bird flu in humans in this region of Egypt and the Egyptian government is concentrating on educating its people on the dangers of the bird flu virus and on how to stop it spreading.

The Egyptian government is considering passing a law which will forbid the movement of poultry from one part of Egypt to another which should greatly help the government in locating the source of a bird flu infection and also prevent it moving around the country. In Egypt there have been more cases of bird flu than in any other country outside Asia. The most amount of bird flu cases in humans have been reported in countries like Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam and in the vast majority of cases the patients are treated with the bird flu drug Tamiflu which is made by the pharmaceutical company Roche.