On the avian flu front Woman dies of bird flu in Vietnam
The World Health Organization reports that H5N1 has killed 254 people across the world since 2003; the latest victim is a Vietnamese woman, bringing the death toll from avian flu in Vietnam to 53 since the end of 2003 — the highest in the world
A 23-year-old woman has died of bird flu in Vietnam, the country which has the world’s second-highest death toll from the virus, medical officials told AFP on Sunday. The woman died on Saturday, said the director of the hospital where she was being treated in Quang Ninh province.
Her death brings Vietnam’s death toll from bird flu to 53 since the end of 2003. Only Indonesia has seen more people killed by the virus. The patient died at 2:30 pm Saturday from the H5N1 strain of the virus, the hospital director Nguyen Hong Hanh told AFP. “She and her family had been in contact with chickens that had contracted bird flu,” he added.
Since the beginning of the year, three people have been struck with bird flu in Vietnam, all in the north of the country, but the victim was the first to have died. An eight-year-old girl recovered while a 32-year-old man remains in a Hanoi hospital. “The risks associated with avian flu are significant,” the agriculture ministry’s veterinary department said Saturday on its website. “The concern stems above all from the carelessness of the general population, which generally does nothing to protect itself.”
Vietnam managed to contain the virus in 2006, but in 2007 recorded new cases of human infection and deaths. Last year there were five deaths from the H5N1 virus, all in the first quarter of the year. Ten Vietnamese provinces are currently experiencing bird flu outbreaks.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), H5N1 has killed 254 people across the world since 2003. The WHO has not yet registered the latest death in Vietnam.
