CAIRO: An Egyptian woman and two children were reported infected with a virulent strain of bird flu Tuesday, bringing to 30 the total number of Egyptians to be diagnosed with the disease since last year.
Nearly half of those infected, 13 people, have died.
The World Health Organization reported two of the three new cases, both young children from southern cities who were admitted to hospitals with fever and cold symptoms.
One of the cases was a 6-year-old girl from the city of Qena, the other a 5-year-old boy from Menia.
The third case was reported by the Egyptian Health Ministry as a 46-year-old woman from the northern Delta city of Damnhour, about 130 km north of the capital, Cairo.
Health officials said that all three people had contracted the virus from domestic birds, the most common route of human infection worldwide.
Since the first outbreak of bird flu in Egypt last year, the country has been one of the worst-affected outside Asia, where the disease originated. Egypt lies on a main route for migratory birds crossing continents.
The deadly H5N1 strain of the disease has killed at least 169 people worldwide so far, the WHO says. Health officials worry that if not quickly eradicated in bird populations through aggressive culling, H5N1 could mutate into a form easily transmittable among humans and spark a pandemic.
So far, bird flu remains relatively hard for humans to catch, and shows up almost exclusively in people who have come in close contact with infected birds.
