Vietnamese girl, 16, dies two weeks after contracting bird flu

Ho Binh Minh, Hanoi

With Asia’s death toll from the H5N1 bird flu strain now at 35, an official said yesterday another patient has been infected by the virus.

Le Truong Giang, deputy director of Ho Chi Minh City’s health department, told Reuters the girl from the southern province of Tay Ninh died on Saturday in the city’s hospital after fighting the virus since late last month.

Tests last week confirmed that an 18-year-old girl who was transferred to the same hospital from the Mekong delta on January 6 had also contracted the H5N1 strain, he said.

“The Health Ministry will have the final say on the case, but tests have shown positive bird flu results.”

The latest death took Vietnam’s toll to 23 since bird flu was first reported in the Mekong delta in December 2003.

The disease has wiped out about 17% of Vietnam’s poultry industry.

Bird flu killed 12 people in Thailand last year, but no new cases have been reported there since November. Malaysia, which has had no human cases, declared itself free of the virus as of last week.

The World Health Organisation warned Vietnam it may face new bird flu cases this month, as poultry is transported ahead of the mid-February Lunar New Year celebrations.

The virus also becomes more active when temperatures cool, according to the WHO.

The Agriculture Ministry said the 16-year-old girl from Tay Ninh developed a high fever and cough after contact with dead chickens at her house, some of them bought from An Giang, a bird-flu hit Mekong delta province.

No outbreaks have been reported in Tay Ninh so far.

A World Health Organisation official said in November that H5N1 was far more lethal than the SARS virus that struck Asia in 2003 and could unleash a pandemic that could kill as many as 50 million people.

SARS, which stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, killed about 800 people around the world before being brought under control.

With the bird flu now endemic on poultry farms, experts fear it will only be a matter of time before the disease mutates into a form that can leap between humans and sweep through populations with no immunity. Pigs are seen as a likely next step. By yesterday, more than 108,000 poultry had been killed or had died of bird flu in Vietnam, mostly in the south, an Agriculture Ministry report said.

It said bird flu could recur in the north.

State media said the H5N1 poultry virus was found on Saturday in the Mekong delta province of Kien Giang bordering Cambodia, with 2,500 birds culled.

Fifteen provinces and cities now had outbreaks, one of them in the north, they said.