Egyptian Is Jordan’s First Bird-Flu Case
Jordanian health officials announced the kingdom’s first human case of the bird flu Friday in a 31-year-old worker believed to have contracted the deadly strain in his home village in Egypt.
Health Minister Saeed Darwazeh said the man, whose name was not given, entered the country March 27 at the southern port of Aqaba and became sick while traveling to Karak, 130 miles south of the capital, Amman.
Doctors in Karak tested the man when he sought treatment for flu symptoms. The World Health Organization was running tests to confirm the case, Darwazeh said, “but we deal with the case as positive with the H5N1 virus.”
The patient, who is from the Fayoum province southwest of the Egyptian capital, said poultry was being raised for domestic consumption at his home, and many of the birds had died recently.