Bird flu kills Vietnam girl, Asia toll now 50
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-06 16:22

A 10-year-old girl has become Vietnam's 36th bird flu victim, a state-run newspaper on Wednesday quoted researchers as saying.

The teenager, who died on March 27 at a Hanoi hospital, lived on the capital's outskirts in Long Bien, the Hanoi Moi Tin Chieu daily quoted the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology as saying.

It gave no further details.

In January the Agriculture Ministry said bird flu was detected at two farms in Long Bien district and 1,000 chickens and ducks there had been slaughtered.

The latest fatality took to 50 Asia's number of deaths from the H5N1 influenza virus since it first hit the region in 2003.

Since December 2004, when the outbreak broke anew, the virus has killed 15 people in Vietnam, including the latest fatality.

The virus, which has also killed 12 Thais and two Cambodians, does not pass easily from bird to humans, and eating properly cooked infected fowl is not dangerous.

But expert fears that if the virus could mutate into a more contagious form and jump between humans, it could unleash a global pandemic of killer flu and that millions could die.