CAIRO: Egypt has detected its first case of the new H1N1 influenza virus in a 12-year-old American girl who recently arrived in Cairo from the United States, a World Health Organization official said on Tuesday.
The case is the first in Africa and the 24th in the Middle East region, said Hassan Al-Bushra, regional adviser for communicable disease surveillance for WHO.
She is a confirmed case of H1N1 … She has been detected at the airport by the thermal detectors, he told Reuters, adding the girl arrived on a flight on Monday and the test was confirmed on Tuesday.
She has been given treatment, she and her mother as well, he added. She is in a good condition.
Egypt, already hard hit by the highly pathogenic bird flu virus, fears another flu could spread quickly in a country where most of the roughly 76 million people live in the densely packed Nile Valley, many in crowded Cairo slums.
The Health Ministry was seeking to contact 145 passengers who were on the same flight as the girl, who is from the U.S. state of Minnesota and is of Egyptian origin. She was thought to have arrived with her mother on a flight via the Netherlands.
Bushra said passengers would be told to watch for symptoms and immediately report to a doctor if they felt ill.
The virus, known as swine flu, spreads easily and mostly causes a mild illness. It has been diagnosed in more than 17,000 people in 64 countries, and has killed more than 100, mostly in Mexico, according to the World Health Organization.
Egypt ordered the slaughter of all its 300,000 to 400,000 pigs on April 29 as a precaution against the H1N1 virus, in a move the United Nations said was a real mistake . -Reuters
