Lebanon's Public Health Ministry announced here on Saturday that the man who died on Thursday had infected with H1N1, recording the country's first death case of the flu, Xinhua reported.
The announcement said that contracting H1N1 was one of the many complications that the patient suffered from, as he was also suffering from an advanced stage of lymphatic cancer, he did not respond to treatment as he lacked immunity.
The patient, 20-year-old man Elias Antoine Nehmetallah of Batroun, died at a hospital in Beirut on Thursday this week. Earlier media reports said that his virus was possibly from relatives who had just traveled from Australia to Lebanon.
Lebanon's neighboring country Israel has also confirmed its first death of the flu on July 27.
Lebanese health minister Mohamed Jawad Khalifeh said in a conference on Friday that so far the country had confirmed 162 cases of the flu, since it announced on May 30 its first confirmed three cases of A/H1N1. However, he expected the virus to increase during October with the start of seasonal flu.
"It is normal if we have more than 30 or 40 cases of H1N1 each day", said Khalife, indicating that "the vaccine is not a solution and we don't know its efficiency yet".
Khalife pointed that the making of H1N1 vaccine has started and will not be put in the market before December.
The World Health Organization declared an H1N1 influenza pandemic on June 11. The new virus has killed more than 800 people worldwide since it emerged in April this year.