Hanoi - A 15-year-old Vietnamese boy has died of avian influenza, becoming the second death confirmed in a week and the fourth this year, state television reported Tuesday night. The boy died en route to a hospital in the capital Hanoi on Friday and later tested positive for the H5N1 avian influenza virus, Vietnam Television reported.
The youth, who lived on a farm with apparently affected poultry, was admitted to a local hospital with trouble breathing on July 27 in Thang Hoa province, 250 kilometres south of Hanoi, online newspaper VietnamNet reported Tuesday night.
His family had bought 20 ducklings to raise on their farm but saw them die one by one and then the boy became sick, VietnamNet quoted the head of Vietnam's Preventive Medicine Department as saying.
The boy is apparently the fourth bird-flu death among seven known illnesses since the virus re-emerged in humans in May in Vietnam.
A 22-year-old pregnant woman also died in Hanoi on July 28.
Vietnam at one time had the highest number of deaths from the H5N1 virus - a disease that primarily affects poultry and wild birds but can infect humans with close contact to sick birds.
The latest death would bring the toll from avian influenza in Vietnam to 46 since 2003.
Bird flu has killed some 192 people worldwide since it emerged in 2003, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The number of human victims is low, but scientists worry that the H5N1 virus could mutate into a new human influenza strain and trigger a flu pandemic that might kill millions.
The WHO has urged careful monitoring of H5N1 combined with efforts to limit it in domestic poultry to prevent humans from contact with the virus.
Vietnam has been praised for slowing down in the death rate through a mass poultry-vaccination scheme, since there is not yet a human vaccine for H5N1.
The country has seen five human deaths since the poultry vaccinations began in late 2005. So far, more than 130 million chickens and ducks have been vaccinated.
