Sisters cured of bird flu
2006-04-07 20:49
Cairo - Two young sisters have been cured of bird flu, Egypt's semi-official news agency reported on Friday, a day after a third girl died of the lethal virus.
The sisters, aged 18 months and six years, returned home on Friday, the Middle East News Agency said, quoting an unidentified doctor in the Health Ministry in Kafr el-Sheik, the Nile Delta province where the girls were admitted to hospital on April 1.
The girls live in a house that raises chickens in the backyard. After eight birds died suddenly, the sisters got sick and their mother took them to hospital.
Mena quoted the doctor as saying that it was the mother's quick action that enabled the sisters to be cured in only six days.
Eleven Egyptians, including the sisters, have contracted the deadly H5N1 virus of bird flu since early March. Three of them have died, all female.
On Thursday, Iman Mohammed Abdel Gawad, 16, died in Menoufia, another Nile Delta province. She had been admitted to hospital a day earlier.
Since bird flu was first detected in Egyptian birds in February, the disease has spread to 19 of the country's 26 provinces. Egypt lies on a migratory route for wild birds.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed 109 people worldwide, the World Health Organisation said this week. It has resulted in the culling of million of birds.
- AP