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Vietnam has new human bird flu suspect

Posted on: Thursday, 3 November 2005, 23:31 CST

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.

Source: REUTERS

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