EGYPT'S CHILDREN CONTINUE TO SURVIVE BIRD FLU

UNCLAS CAIRO 000074 SENSITIVE SIPDIS DEPT FOR AIAG (AMBASSADOR LANGE AND DAVID WINN),DEPT PASS TO AID (DENNIS CARROLL) E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: TBIO KFLU KSTH PGOV ECON KSCA EAGR EG SUBJECT: EGYPT'S CHILDREN CONTINUE TO SURVIVE BIRD FLU REF: 08 CAIRO 02445 Sensitive but Unclassified. Please handle accordingly. ¶1. (SBU) Summary and comment: Egypt's Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) has announced Egypt's 52nd human avian influenza (AI) case: a 21-month-old girl from Kerdasa in the Sixth of October Governorate. The girl is in stable condition at Manshia Al Bakry Hospital in Cairo. This case marks the continuation of a trend: Egyptian children recover from AI at a remarkable rate. To date, for example, there have been twenty-four confirmed pre-teen H5N1 cases in Egypt. Twenty-three of them, including all twenty-one of those under the age of ten, survived. Egypt's teenage and adult AI victims, conversely, do not fare well -- 80% have died. ¶2. (SBU) Egypt's latest AI victim, the second here in less than a month, was admitted to Imbaba Fever Hospital on January 10, 2009, suffering from high temperature, vomiting and diarrhea. Her doctors administered Tamiflu when they suspected she might be afflicted with AI. They transferred her to Manshia Al Bakry on January 12th. Both recent victims apparently had contact with dead poultry. The last two cases mark the end of a seven month respite from AI (ref). ¶3. (SBU) Comment: While Egypt's children have done remarkably well in surviving AI, older victims do not fare as well: twenty-two out of twenty-eight older AI victims have died. Data elsewhere suggests there may be some relationship between age and AI survival, but the AI mortality rates in Egypt -- 0% for those under 10, 4% for all pre-teens and 80% for the older AI victims -- seem to be extreme, perhaps suggesting some unique, but as yet undetermined, local influences. Scobey