Bird Flu Infects In 2nd Province In Vietnam

Some 400 chickens in Thanh Hoa`s Ba Thuoc district had died of the disease, the agriculture ministry said in a report seen on Wednesday.

Vietnam's agriculture ministry has confirmed an outbreak of bird flu among poultry in the northern province of Thanh Hoa, where a girl was hospitalised with the deadly disease last week.

Some 400 chickens in Thanh Hoa's Ba Thuoc district had died of the disease, the agriculture ministry said in a report seen on Wednesday.

In response, authorities in Ba Thuoc, about 150 km (94 miles) south of Hanoi, have slaughtered nearly 8,000 chickens in the area to stop the virus from spreading, the report said.

Thanh Hoa is the second province in two weeks to report an outbreak of the bird-borne illness among poultry, the other being Thai Nguyen, directly north of the capital.

The health ministry has said an 8-year-old girl from Thanh Hoa was infected with bird flu after eating poultry.

Five Vietnamese people died of bird flu in 2008 out of six reported H5N1 infections, all in the north of the country in the first quarter of the year, when cool temperatures allow the virus to thrive best.

The H5N1 strain has killed 247 people globally among the 391 confirmed cases of infection since 2003, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Before the latest case in Vietnam, the WHO said Vietnam had had 106 human infections, the second highest number among 15 countries with known human cases after Indonesia.