Health experts are investigating Vietnam's first suspected human bird flu case in 18 months, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official said yesterday, as Indonesia confirmed its 77th death and Pakistan reported a fresh outbreak among poultry.
The WHO is looking into the suspected bird flu case in Vietnam following a series of new outbreaks on poultry farms, a WHO spokeswoman said.
If confirmed it would be the first human infection in one-and-a-half years in Vietnam, one of the countries hardest hit by the virus, with 42 human fatalities between 2003 and November 2005.
In Indonesia, a five-year-old girl is the latest victim of the disease, taking the country's death toll from the virus to 77, a health ministry official said. Indonesia is the country worst hit by the virus.
The girl died last Thursday at a hospital in Solo city on the main island of Java, said the official from the ministry's bird flu information centre.
Authorities believe she was infected by sick chickens, with 20 dropping dead around her home in recent weeks.
Speaking about the suspected case in Vietnam, WHO spokeswoman Dida Connor said: "We're working closely with the ministry of health on a suspected H5N1 case. If this were to be a human case, it would not be surprising."
Vietnamese state media have reported that an initial test last Sunday on a 30-year-old farmer from northern Vinh Phuc province, now in a critical condition in a Hanoi hospital, had proved positive for bird flu.
The man had helped slaughter chickens for a wedding about one month ago from a neighbouring farm, where several of the flock of 500 birds later died. A Vietnamese veterinary team this week went to assess the farm.
Connor stressed that the WHO was awaiting Vietnamese test results on the case, which would then have to be verified by the UN health body's laboratory tests.
"We don't yet have an official confirmation of this suspected case, but we are following it closely," health ministry spokesman Nguyen Duc Long said.
The disease racing through Asian poultry stocks remains hard for people to catch, but experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially triggering a pandemic that could kill millions.
PHOTO CAPTION
A farmer unloads chickens at a local poultry market in northern province of Ha Tay in Vietnam, March 2007. (AFP)