Hanoi - Vietnamese authorities believe a woman who died last
week may have been infected with avian influenza, state media said
Monday.
The state-run newspaper Vietnam News reported the 26-year-old
woman was admitted to a hospital in Soc Trang Province, in the
country's Mekong Delta, on March 16 with symptoms of headache, high
fever and respiratory difficulties.
Her condition worsened and she died on Friday.
The head of the community health centre where the patient was
initially treated reportedly said she had eaten a sick duck about a
month ago.
Tests are to confirm later this week whether the woman was
infected with the H5N1 avian flu virus.
Bird flu has struck eleven provinces in Vietnam this year, killing
tens of thousands of domestic fowl.
So far, there have been four confirmed human cases of bird flu,
three of whom have died. In 2008, six people contracted bird flu,
five of them did not survive.
Nguyen Huy Nga, the director of the Ministry of Health's
Preventive Medicine department, was quoted in the Gia Dinh & Xa Hoi
newspaper as saying that all bird flu deaths occurred due to late
hospital admission.
Bird flu is usually spread by contact between infected birds and
humans, but scientists fear that the virus could mutate into a form
that is easily transmissible among humans and spark a global pandemic
that could kill millions.
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