A 13-year-old girl from Vietnam's southern Dong Thap Province, who was confirmed to have contracted the bird flu virus H5N1 by the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City, died on Saturday, bringing fatalities in the country since late December 2004 to 11, a local doctor said. 

"The patient was admitted to our hospital on January 20. She lived in Cao Lanh town where dead poultry were detected," a doctor at the Pediatric Hospital No 1 in Ho Chi Minh City said, declining to be named.

The patient's 35-year-old mother, also a H5N1 carrier, died on January 21 after 10 hours of treatment at the city-based Hospital of Tropical Diseases, the doctor noted, adding that the woman often had a bath in a canal that contained dead chickens.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said further investigations into the mother and her daughter are needed to explore sources of exposure and look for signs of illness in family members, other close contacts, and the general community.

"In view of the six-day interval between dates of symptom onset in the mother and her child, limited human-to-human transmission, as seen during similar events in the past, cannot be ruled out at this stage," the WHO said in an statement posted on its website on Friday.

The Pediatric Hospital No 1 is treating a bird flu patient, a 10-year-old girl from Tan Thanh district of southern Long An Province. Before being admitted to the hospital on January 20 with symptoms of high temperature and breathing difficulties, she had contact with dead chickens, said the doctor.

On Sunday morning, a Cambodian woman being treated in a Vietnamese hospital died of suspected bird flu, doctors said.

If Soc Khol, 25, from Kampot Province in Cambodia tests positive for the virus she will be the 12th person to die of bird flu in Vietnam since the virus re-surfaced in late December.

She died at 8:45 AM yesterday in the provincial hospital in Kien Giang, said Nguyen Van Hung, a doctor in the infectious diseases' ward.

The doctor said that she came from an area where many chickens and ducks had died of bird flu. Khol's 14-year-old brother died mysteriously over 10 days ago after developing a high fever, a bad cough and breathing problems, the doctor said. Khol's test samples were sent to the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City for analysis, the doctor said.

Since December 28, 2004, a total of 16 people in Vietnam have been reported to contract H5N1, of whom 11, eight from the southern region and two from the northern region, have died. Altogether, 31 bird flu patients in the country have died since the disease started hitting it in December 2003.

Since January 2005, bird flu has stricken 28 cities and provinces in Vietnam, including six in the northern region, leading to the forced culling of over 828,000 fowl, according to the country's Department of Animal Health.

(China Daily January 31, 2005)