Bird flu kills Vietnam girl, Cambodia case possible

Bird flu has killed a 10-year-old girl in southern Vietnam, doctors said on Monday, and they hoped the death of a Cambodian women suspected of having the virus would force Phnom Penh to take preventative measures.

The girl from the southern Vietnamese province of Long An died on Sunday, said a doctor at Ho Chi Minh City's Paediatric Hospital No.1, raising the toll in Vietnam from the H5N1 virus to 12 since the disease erupted again in December.

The Asian bird flu has killed 44 people since the end of 2003 - 32 in Vietnam and 12 in Thailand.

Vietnamese doctors expect test results on Tuesday on a 25-year-old Cambodian woman who was hospitalised on Jan. 28 with a high fever and died on Sunday. Her lungs had been badly damaged.

"This case is a worry as her brother had died from respiratory failure before he could be rushed to a hospital," said doctor Nguyen Van Hung, who supervised the Cambodian patient, quoting details given by relatives of the woman.

Most bird flu victims are believed to have caught the virus from infected poultry but doctors fear it could mutate into a form that is easily passed between people, unleashing a global human flu pandemic that could kill millions.

If the case is confirmed, the woman would be the first person from Cambodia found to be infected and killed by the H5N1 poultry virus. Poultry outbreaks were last detected in Cambodia in September 2004 but no human casualty has been reported there.

"We hope the test results will soon be in place so as to caution the health authorities in Cambodia as people there have been coming over to Ha Tien town very often," Hung said.

The Vietnamese town of Ha Tien borders Cambodia in the southern province of Kien Giang. The town is 340 km (210 miles) southwest of Ho Chi Minh City.

"We are still waiting for the test result to be passed from Vietnam. It is still a suspected case for us," said Ly Sovann, head of Cambodia's Centre for Disease Control.

PAINFUL DEATH

High fever, coughing and acute pneumonia are symptoms of bird flu, which kills about 80 percent of people it infects.

The World Health Organization has said the bird flu virus might already have infected people in countries neighbouring Vietnam, such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, which lack the infrastructure or capacity to conduct surveillance.

In Thailand, outbreaks among chickens have been confirmed in five provinces in eastern and central parts of the country, the latest on Jan. 28 in Nakhon Pathom, the livestock department said on Monday.

Thailand, worried that the disease will spread from Vietnam, has offered to help Hanoi contain its outbreaks.

Vietnamese and Thai scientists will meet next month to share information on battling the virus, Nguyen Tran Hien, director of Vietnam's National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, told Reuters.