Bird flu kills Vietnamese, toll hits 18 since Dec
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Bird flu may have claimed the life of a Vietnamese man in the past week, bringing the country’s toll to 18 since the latest outbreak in late December, health officials said on Monday.
A provincial health official told Reuters preliminary tests by the Hanoi-based National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology had confirmed the 46-year-old man from the northern province of Hung Yen died last Thursday at a Hanoi hospital from bird flu.
The official said by telephone from Hung Yen, 64 km (40 miles) southeast of Hanoi, that the man was admitted to hospital a week ago with a high fever and coughing.
A Health Ministry spokesman said the man’s death was still not officially recognised as being caused by the H5N1 virus.
The ministry’s record, which often comes only when full laboratory test results are available, shows a total of 37 Vietnamese have died since the virus came to Asia in late 2003. The disease has also killed 12 Thais and four Cambodians.
The World Health Organisation has said the spate of human bird flu cases in Vietnam this year suggests the deadly virus may be mutating in ways that are making it more capable of being passed between humans who so far are not immune to the infection.
On Monday state media in China said more than three million doses of bird flu vaccine were rushed to a remote western province near Tibet where migratory birds were found dead from the H5N1 virus.
Vietnam has started but has yet to complete developing the bird flu vaccine. It targets to test the vaccine on humans in August while initial tests on poultry showed the birds have shown anti-bodies.
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