Egypt has suffered from nineteen human bird flu deaths in total

News reports have confirmed that 2 Egyptian females have succumbed to the bird flu virus recently. The women who died were in addition to two other women who died in Egypt earlier this week. In all the cases it is known that the patients had had contact with sick poultry in farms or in their own backyards at their homes thus highlighting the dangers of being near birds infected with the H5N1 flu virus.

Egypt has suffered from nineteen human bird flu deaths in total and these four cases come after a five month period in which no single human cases were reported. All the women in question were immediately taken to hospital when it became clear that they had a severe case of the bird flu but in all cases it has been left to late for the Tamiflu drug to counteract the effects of the deadly flu. Tamiflu is extremely effective in beating the H5N1 virus but it must be given to people within the first 48 hours of the symptoms of the flu virus appearing.

Officials from the World Health Organisation said that the fact that these four women died was because of a delay in the virus being diagnosed. They said that it was important that Egyptian people realised that it was extremely dangerous to be in contact with sick poultry and that should any family members become sick they should be taken to hospital quickly before the symptoms worsened.

Millions of Egyptian people rely on poultry for their food and for their income and thus millions of Egyptian have direct contact with poultry every single day. Despite widespread vaccination programs in Egypt the disease has not been eradicated completely from birds and thus humans are still in danger in the country.