17-Year-Old Girl Dies of Avian Flu in Vietnam

A 17-year-old girl in northern Vietnam has died of avian influenza, the 48th official bird flu fatality in Southeast Asia since outbreaks began 18 months ago, local authorities said Friday.

The girl’s death followed an announcement a day earlier by Cambodian health officials that a 26-year-old man there had died of the disease, the country’s second fatality.

The man lived in the southern province of Kampot, close to where the nation’s first confirmed bird flu victim, a 25-year-old woman, became ill. The woman died in a Vietnamese hospital Jan. 31 after crossing the border to seek care.

The announcements of the latest victims come amid a spate of possible cases, suggesting the disease is well-rooted in the region.

“The evidence strongly suggests that the surveillance is not sensitive enough,” said Klaus Stohr, head of the World Health Organization’s global influenza program.

Scientists fear that if the virus mutates into a form easily passed between people, it could become a global pandemic.

The largest cluster of possible cases emerged this week in Vietnam’s Quang Binh province, where a 13-year-old girl with flu-like symptoms recently died. She was not tested for the bird flu virus. Her younger brother and aunt have been hospitalized with similar symptoms.

Nearly 200 people from one town in the province sought care for possible bird flu. The number of suspected cases was later sharply scaled back as many showed only mild symptoms.

This year about half of Vietnam’s provinces have been affected by bird flu, compared with nearly the entire nation in 2004. The government has reported progress in reducing the number of poultry outbreaks, but the flow of human cases continues.

Stohr blamed ducks, which often become infected and shed the virus without becoming sick.

“It’s already hard enough to convince people not to eat chicken from a flock when half of the flock has died,” he said. “It’s much more difficult to tell them not to eat ducks that don’t show symptoms.”