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Bird flu death toll reaches 41
29/07/2005 14:32 - (SA)
Hanoi - Two people have died of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in Vietnam, raising the toll from the disease in the country to 41, said a health official in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday.
The official said that a 24-year-old man died on Monday in a hospital in Tra Vinh province and a 26-year-old woman from Ho Chi Minh City died on Wednesday in the city's Cho Ray hospital.
Doctor Phan Van Tu of the southern business capital's Pasteur Institute said: "Both of them were found to have tested positive to the H5N1 virus."
A health official from Tra Vinh province said the man had died as a result of direct contact through the culling of infected chickens.
'10 chickens show symptoms of illness'
Head of the Cang Long district's preventive healthcare centre, Thach Nhon, said: "We are investigating and quarantining the areas around his home, where all of his 10 chickens had shown symptoms of illness. There are also infected chickens in the neighbourhood."
To combat the deadly virus, the Vietnamese government had decided to vaccinate its poultry nationwide.
It had already bought 20 million out of 414 million doses of vaccine to inoculate poultry early next month, firstly in Nam Dinh province in the north and then in the southern province of Tien Giang before being extended to the whole country later in the year.
A total of 60 people had died since the beginning of the epidemic in 2003.
In addition to the 41 Vietnamese, the virus had killed 12 Thais, four Cambodians and three Indonesians.
Health experts had warned the virus could become a global pandemic if avian flu developed the ability to spread quickly from person to person.
- AFP
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