An eight-year-old girl has been confirmed as the fifth person to die in Vietnam from an outbreak of bird flu, and nine other children with respiratory ailments are being tested for the virus.
The girl, from the northern province of Ha Tay, died on Saturday. She was taken to hospital in Hanoi on January 15th after first showing symptoms on January 11th, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.
The WHO says there has been no sign the disease is being spread between humans. Its victims are believed to have caught it from infected chickens, officials say.
Experts are worried there might be a mixing of the avian flu with a human flu and that a new, contagious deadly disease could sweep out of Asia, a year after Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome killed about 800 people around the world.
