Two-year-old diagnosed with bird flu in Egypt
A two-year-old girl has been diagnosed with bird flu in Egypt, a health ministry spokesman said on Friday.
Egypt`s first case of bird flu was first recorded in 2006, and 60 people have since become infected with the deadly virus, 23 of them have died.
The girl, from the central Egyptian province of Qena, was hospitalized on Monday after displaying symptoms of the disease. On Thursday tests confirmed that she was infected with the deadly H5N1 strain.
She apparently became infected after coming into contact with sick poultry.
This is the second case of bird flu registered in the country in just over a week. On March 18, a 38-year-old woman from the Asyut province, to the south of Cairo, was diagnosed with bird flu.
As of March 23, a total of 412 bird flu cases had been registered worldwide since the virus was first detected in 2003, resulting in 256 deaths, according to the WHO.
Although there have been no incidences of human-to-human infection, experts fear that the bird flu virus may mutate into a form that could be easily transmitted from person to person, causing a global pandemic.
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