By Lisa Schnirring
The World Health Organization (WHO) today confirmed three new H5N1 avian influenza cases from Indonesia and Egypt, one of them fatal, a day after Vietnam's health ministry announced a death from the disease, its first in nearly 2 years.
Indonesia's newest case-patient is a 5-year-old girl from Jakarta province who died from her infection and is a family contact of a man who died from H5N1 on Jan 7, the WHO reported. The girl's illness was detected on Jan 7 during surveillance as part of the investigation into the man's infection.
She was referred to a hospital and began having breathing difficulties on Jan 13. The girl's condition worsened, and she died on Jan 16. The WHO said the girl had been exposed to the same pigeons implicated in the man's death and shared the same household environment. Surveillance of the patients' contacts hasn't found any more H5N1 infections.
The girl's illness and death raise Indonesia's H5N1 total to 184 cases, including 152 fatalities. The country leads the world in both categories.
One of Egypt's cases is in a 2-year-old girl from Cairo governorate who was treated for flulike symptoms as an outpatient at a hospital on Oct 30, according to a WHO statement. Her H5N1 infection was detected by Egypt's Central Public Health Laboratory during periodic screening of respiratory samples collected from outpatient surveillance sites. More
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