AMMAN - Health authorities confirmed three new cases of H1N1 (swine) flu on Sunday, raising the total number of incidences in the Kingdom to 18, a health official said.

According to the Primary Healthcare Director at the Health Ministry Adel Bilbeisi, one of the new cases is Jordanian, while the other two are Arab nationals.

The first case is a six-year-old Iraqi child who lives in Jordan and has not left the Kingdom in recent weeks, leading authorities to believe it is the first confirmed domestic transmission of the disease.

“This is the first case we have registered in a resident who has not recently travelled,” Bilbeisi told The Jordan Times in a phone interview yesterday, adding that a ministry team is currently investigating how the child was infected with the disease.

The second patient is a 55-year-old Syrian woman who arrived in Amman from the US on June 19 and showed symptoms of H1N1 on June 24.

The third case, according to Bilbeisi, is a 14-year-old Jordanian who travelled from Canada to the Kingdom on June 24 and showed swine flu symptoms three days ago.

Since the announcement of the first confirmed swine flu cases in Jordan on June 15, the total number of infected people in the country has reached 18, 12 of whom have been discharged after fully recovering from the disease. Three more infected persons are expected to be discharged today.

H1N1, a mixture of human, avian and swine influenza viruses, has so far infected 59,814 people around the world and caused 263 deaths, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organisation.

By Khetam Malkawi

© Jordan Times 2009

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