The Egyptian ministry of health Thursday confirmed that an Egyptian girl has contracted the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza.
According to a spokesman for the ministry, the girl is the 60th case of the virus infecting the human population.
The 30-month-old girl was taken to a hospital in Qena, a town in southern Egypt some 300 miles south of Cairo, local media quoted spokesman Abdel-Rahman Shahine as saying.
She showed symptoms of a fever on Monday and was taken to a local hospital where she was diagnosed with the bird flu.
Egypt has been the hardest hit country by the deadly avian influenza outside Asia. It reported its first H5N1 virus in dead poultry in February 2006 and the first human case in March of the same year.
The death toll of the human cases of bird flu in the populous country is 23.
According to the latest statistics of the WHO, some 412 people in 15 countries and regions have contracted the virus and 256 of them died of the disease.