Tweet
Re: Egyptian girl dies of bird flu / mother also in hospital
Nadi's mother also sick and in hospital in Cairo...
Egypt Teenage Girl Dies of Bird Flu
Jano Charbel & Agencies
CAIRO, 7 February 2007 ? A teenage girl became the fifth Egyptian to die of bird flu in six weeks, a health official said yesterday, amid fears of a global surge in infections by the deadly virus. Nour Nadi, a 17-year-old from the impoverished oasis province of Fayyum, 100 kilometers south of the capital, died Monday of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza.
Nadi?s mother, Marzouqa Ramadan, who may have caught the virus from her daughter, was said to have been admitted to a respiratory illnesses hospital in the Al-Abbasiya district of Cairo, on the same day, where she is being examined by doctors.
The World Health Organization?s John Jabbour said the girl died of the normal strain of the virus rather than a new drug-resistant variety. Of the 20 people diagnosed with the virus since it was first detected in Egypt in 2006, eight have survived, but the mortality rate increased after the emergence of what the WHO said was a more virulent strain late last year.
?In the last case in Beni Sueif (province), it had turned back to the normal strain and we expect this one to be the same,? said Jabbour about Nadi?s death. In January, the WHO announced that people had died of bird flu in the Nile Delta province of Gharbiya, north of Cairo, after the virus mutated into a strain resistant to the common Tamiflu treatment.
Subsequent tests in the same and other areas have not shown the presence of the drug-resistant strain. ?The Gharbiya strain has died off and we are back to the normal strain,? Jabbour told AFP. Nadi died not because her infection was drug-resistant, he added, but because she tried to hide her symptoms from discovery because of the growing stigma surrounding the disease.
In another development, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, including the group?s number three, to stand trial before a military court, officials said yesterday.
?The president of the republic has ordered that leading Muslim Brotherhood member Khayrat Al-Shater and others be tried before a military court,? the source said, without specifying how many co-defendants faced trial.
Shater, the movement?s main financier, is part of a group of 29 Brotherhood members whose assets were frozen by the state last month on charges of money laundering and financing illegal activities. ?It is a cruel decision and it is a political one,? the Brotherhood?s deputy supreme guide Mohammed Habib told AFP.
Nadi's mother also sick and in hospital in Cairo...
Egypt Teenage Girl Dies of Bird Flu
Jano Charbel & Agencies
CAIRO, 7 February 2007 ? A teenage girl became the fifth Egyptian to die of bird flu in six weeks, a health official said yesterday, amid fears of a global surge in infections by the deadly virus. Nour Nadi, a 17-year-old from the impoverished oasis province of Fayyum, 100 kilometers south of the capital, died Monday of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza.
Nadi?s mother, Marzouqa Ramadan, who may have caught the virus from her daughter, was said to have been admitted to a respiratory illnesses hospital in the Al-Abbasiya district of Cairo, on the same day, where she is being examined by doctors.
The World Health Organization?s John Jabbour said the girl died of the normal strain of the virus rather than a new drug-resistant variety. Of the 20 people diagnosed with the virus since it was first detected in Egypt in 2006, eight have survived, but the mortality rate increased after the emergence of what the WHO said was a more virulent strain late last year.
?In the last case in Beni Sueif (province), it had turned back to the normal strain and we expect this one to be the same,? said Jabbour about Nadi?s death. In January, the WHO announced that people had died of bird flu in the Nile Delta province of Gharbiya, north of Cairo, after the virus mutated into a strain resistant to the common Tamiflu treatment.
Subsequent tests in the same and other areas have not shown the presence of the drug-resistant strain. ?The Gharbiya strain has died off and we are back to the normal strain,? Jabbour told AFP. Nadi died not because her infection was drug-resistant, he added, but because she tried to hide her symptoms from discovery because of the growing stigma surrounding the disease.
In another development, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, including the group?s number three, to stand trial before a military court, officials said yesterday.
?The president of the republic has ordered that leading Muslim Brotherhood member Khayrat Al-Shater and others be tried before a military court,? the source said, without specifying how many co-defendants faced trial.
Shater, the movement?s main financier, is part of a group of 29 Brotherhood members whose assets were frozen by the state last month on charges of money laundering and financing illegal activities. ?It is a cruel decision and it is a political one,? the Brotherhood?s deputy supreme guide Mohammed Habib told AFP.
Comment