Vietnam has new human bird flu suspect

HANOI (Reuters) – A 24-year-old Vietnamese woman with a
fever and respiratory problems who comes from a province with
bird flu outbreaks in poultry is being tested for the virus, an
official and state media said on Friday.

The Tuoi Tre newspaper said the woman, who is seven months
pregnant, was taken to the General Hospital in Bac Giang
province on Thursday with fever and breathing difficulties.

She was isolated and being tested for the H5N1 virus as
ducks at her house had died recently, it said.

Bird flu has infected poultry in three communes in Bac
Giang, 50 km (31 miles) northeast of Hanoi, an Animal Health
Department official said, citing a local government
announcement.

It is Vietnam’s first outbreak in poultry in three weeks.

Tuoi Tre said more than 3,000 chickens, ducks and geese had
died in recent days in the three communes.

The paper also quoted Nguyen Tran Hien, director of the
National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology, as saying
tests on a 25-year-old woman hospitalized in Hanoi earlier this
week showed she did not have bird flu.

The Health Ministry said on Wednesday Vietnam had been free
of human infections of the H5N1 virus since August.

Bird flu first broke out in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta in
December 2003. Since then, 91 people had been infected and 41
have died of the virus, which experts fear could mutate into a
form easily passed between people and unleash a global
pandemic.