The Egyptian Health Ministry has announced that the country's last bird flu patient had recovered, according to the official MENA news agency.

The case was an 18-year-old girl called Shaimaa Khairi el- Disouqi, who was from Kafr el-Sheikh, a governorate on the Mediterranean Sea coast, some 125 km north of Cairo.

The Egyptian health authorities said that el-Disouqi would be discharged from hospital after tests showed she was completely recovered.

The girl was the eighth and last of 12 bird flu patients in this populous country in north Africa who recovered. The other four, however, died.

Egypt reported its first human bird flu case on March 18 and the second on March 27, both of whom were women.

Egypt found its first outbreak of bird flu virus in poultry on Feb. 17. Soon afterward, the government has taken tough measures to curb the spread of the fatal disease.

The deadly H5N1 strain has killed over 100 people worldwide since its latest outbreak in southeast Asia in late 2003, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Most victims were infected after close contact with sick birds.

The virus currently can only jump from birds to humans, but scientists fear that it could mutate into a form capable of passing easily among humans and thus spark a global pandemic.

Source: Xinhua