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Bird flu blamed as 13-year-old dies
Source: Agencies |
January 9, 2009, Friday
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THE sister of Vietnam's first confirmed bird flu patient of the year died with similar symptoms last week and the director of the hospital where she was treated said she probably also had avian flu.
"We suspect that it was bird flu that caused her death," said Truong Thi Mau, director of the Ba Thuoc district hospital.
"But we can't be 100 percent sure because there was no sample for tests. At the time we thought her illness was something else," Mau said from Ba Thuoc, about 150 kilometers south of Hanoi in Thanh Hoa Province.
The dead girl, named Bui Thi Thuong, was 13 years old. She was taken to hospital after developing symptoms such as a high temperature and a bad cough. She died at the hospital on January 2.
Her 8-year-old sister, Bui Thi Thao, who was confirmed as having bird flu by the Vietnamese National Steering Committee for Avian Influenza on Tuesday, is now recovering.
Both girls had eaten duck and chicken raised on the family farm, Mau said.
After Thao's infection was confirmed, about 50 children with flu symptoms were brought in by parents in the area but tests for avian influenza were negative on all of them.
Five Vietnamese people died of bird flu in 2008 out of six reported H5N1 infections, all in the north of the country in the first quarter of the year, when cooler temperatures allow the virus to thrive.
The H5N1 strain has killed 247 people globally among the 391 confirmed cases since 2003, according to the World Health Organization.
Before the latest case in Vietnam, the WHO said Vietnam had seen 106 human infections, the second highest after Indonesia, among 15 countries with known human cases.
In Vietnam, authorities this week confirmed outbreaks among poultry in two areas near Hanoi, including Ba Thuoc, where nearly 8,000 poultry had been slaughtered to prevent it from spreading.
"We suspect that it was bird flu that caused her death," said Truong Thi Mau, director of the Ba Thuoc district hospital.
"But we can't be 100 percent sure because there was no sample for tests. At the time we thought her illness was something else," Mau said from Ba Thuoc, about 150 kilometers south of Hanoi in Thanh Hoa Province.
The dead girl, named Bui Thi Thuong, was 13 years old. She was taken to hospital after developing symptoms such as a high temperature and a bad cough. She died at the hospital on January 2.
Her 8-year-old sister, Bui Thi Thao, who was confirmed as having bird flu by the Vietnamese National Steering Committee for Avian Influenza on Tuesday, is now recovering.
Both girls had eaten duck and chicken raised on the family farm, Mau said.
After Thao's infection was confirmed, about 50 children with flu symptoms were brought in by parents in the area but tests for avian influenza were negative on all of them.
Five Vietnamese people died of bird flu in 2008 out of six reported H5N1 infections, all in the north of the country in the first quarter of the year, when cooler temperatures allow the virus to thrive.
The H5N1 strain has killed 247 people globally among the 391 confirmed cases since 2003, according to the World Health Organization.
Before the latest case in Vietnam, the WHO said Vietnam had seen 106 human infections, the second highest after Indonesia, among 15 countries with known human cases.
In Vietnam, authorities this week confirmed outbreaks among poultry in two areas near Hanoi, including Ba Thuoc, where nearly 8,000 poultry had been slaughtered to prevent it from spreading.
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