# 417
Yesterday's news that a 17 year-old-girl died of the H5N1 virus is now followed by a report that her mother is hospitalized with a `respiratory illness'. No other details are available at this time. A tip of the hat to Theresa42 at the Wiki for finding this one.
From ArabNews.com:
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.
The report that this latest case did not involve a Tamiflu resistant strain would be welcome news. The wording in this article seems to say in one place that it wasn't a resistant strain, and elsewhere, that they `expect it not to be'.
Hopefully we'll get further clarification on this. Right now, it doesn't sound like a very strong statement of fact.
What we still don't know are onset dates of illness for the first victim, or for her mother, or if anyone else may be affected. Nor do we know if the mother has tested positive for the H5N1 virus.
These early news reports are often difficult to decipher, and may not fully represent the facts on the ground. So once again, this is something to watch.
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