Vietnam says one new bird flu death, Asia toll reaches 19

11.45am

HANOI - A Vietnamese man has died of bird flu, taking Asia's death toll to 19, and a Cambodian woman who died last week in a Vietnamese hospital could be the first victim from that neighbouring country, officials said today.

However, a report from the World Health Organisation at the weekend showed the H5N1 virus was not spreading from person to person, suggesting it was not yet mutating into forms that could turn it into a global epidemic for humans.

The latest victim was a 27-year-old man from Vietnam's southern Binh Phuoc province, a medical official said.

A 23-year-old man from Vietnam's Central Highlands has tested positive for the H5N1 strain and was being treated, the official from the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City said.

The World Health Organisation confirmed that death on Monday.

Fourteen people have died of the disease in Vietnam while five have died in Thailand.

"Beside the two cases, we have received more samples for tests," the official said, adding that test results for a Cambodian woman who had died from respiratory illness were expected later Monday.

The pregnant 24-year-old Cambodian woman who died last week in a Vietnamese hospital was the impoverished country's first suspected human victim of bird flu, said a WHO official in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

Officials at Chau Doc hospital in Vietnam said the woman died there last Friday of acute respiratory illness.

The virus has struck virtually all of Vietnam's 64 provinces and major cities. Hanoi has ordered a nationwide ban on the transport of poultry and a cull of all fowl in the capital.

The WHO said last week genetic tests on bird flu virus taken from two Vietnamese sisters who died showed it had not acquired the mutations needed to pass from person to person.

A Food and Agriculture Organisation official in Vietnam said three or four pigs had tested positive for the virus, but an FAO scientist in Rome later said the tests used were experimental and played down the report.

Pigs and birds are both sources of new influenza viruses that can infect humans, but the immune system of a pig is closer to that of a human than is that of a bird. Scientists say pigs are ideal vessels for mixing genes from bird flu and the human influenza virus.

In the United States, tests for a different strain of avian flu at five Delaware poultry farms within a 3.2km radius of an infected flock have shown no signs of the disease, a Delaware state official said on Monday.

The farms were among 12 facilities state veterinarians were to check for infection after discovery of the disease in a non-commercial grower's flock on Feb 6 forced authorities to destroy 12,000 birds.

The diseased birds tested positive for the virulent H7 virus, which is different from the H5N1 virus in Asia. The H7 strain is fatal to poultry but does not appear to transmit to humans.

The world animal health body OIE recommended that countries with avian flu closely monitor pigs in contact with infected birds and cull those in which the presence of the virus was confirmed.

Experts say the possibility of a new strain sweeping through a human population with no immunity is remote, but each outbreak narrows the odds a little.

That is one reason the FAO and WHO have been urging affected countries to act swiftly to stamp out the H5N1 virus, preferably by slaughtering poultry within 3km of an outbreak.

Transmission to hogs is a constant worry, especially in countries such as Vietnam and China where poultry, pigs and people often live in close proximity.

China, home to the world's biggest poultry population and where the virus may have spread to 13 of 31 provinces, has said it faces a tough fight to defeat the disease.

Officials believe the virus may be spread by migratory birds.

Fifty million chickens and ducks had been culled in Asia and poultry restocking alone would cost some US$150 million ($220.91 million), the FAO said.

- REUTERS