CAIRO: After months of silence, the deadly H5N1 influenza, or bird flu, has resurfaced in Egypt, the country’s health ministry said over the weekend. They reported that a new case was discovered, bringing the the total number of infected in the country to 110.

Ministry of Health spokesman Abdel Rahman Shaheen said in a press statement published by the state-run MENA news agency that a 20-year-old woman was infected.

According to the report, the young woman was admitted to a local hospital last Wednesday and is in critical condition. The ministry did not give further details as to how she became infected.

In May this year, an international health expert said that Egypt failed in eliminating the danger of Avian influenza. Farid Hosni, the head of the project “Stop bird flu stop AI” of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), said in a speech at a conference organized by the project in collaboration with the General Authority for Veterinary Services, that the bird flu virus “is the more serious and deadly than swine flu, especially in Egypt, where death rates reached 59 percent.”

He added that Egypt is one of five countries in the world to have a possible pandemic, and it is the only country in Africa where the disease still exists.

BM

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