Source: Xinhua

03-06-2009 14:34

Special Report:   Tech Max

CAIRO, March 4 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian boy at the age of two years and eight months has contracted bird flu virus, bringing the number of human case of the avian influenza to 57 in the country, a Health Ministry spokesman said Wednesday.

An Egyptian health worker gives vaccinations to chickens at a house near Menoufia, 80 km (50 miles) north of Cairo January  1, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters File Photo)

The boy, Abdullah Nagy Amran, comes from the northern Egyptian governorate of Alexandria, some 220 km northwest of Cairo, the state MENA news agency quoted the spokesman Abdel Rahman Shahine as saying.

The boy showed symptoms after contacting with dead birds on Wednesday, and he is in a stable condition after being admitted to a hospital and given the antiviral drug Tamiflu, said Shahine.

This is the second human case of bird flu less than a week in Egypt, where millions of families raise poultry as a source of food and income.

On Sunday, Egyptian Health Ministry confirmed that two-year-old boy Youssef Abdel-Azim from Fayoum governorate, some 85 km south of Cairo, was infected with bird flu virus.

Egypt is the most affected country by the deadly avian influenza outside Asia. It reported its first H5N1 virus in dead poultry in February 2006 and the first human case in March of the same year.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), some 409 people in 15 countries and regions have contracted the virus and 256 of them died of the disease as of March 2. 　

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Editor:Yang Jie