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Bird flu has claimed its 10th victim in China, the state Xinhua news agency reported. The victim was a 9-year-old girl from the southeastern province of Zhejiang who died Monday.
Chinese officials told the World Health Organization that the girl was infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus. She came into contact with sick chickens while visiting relatives in Anhui province in February. Shortly after that, she developed fever and pneumonia.
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The girl is the second person to die of bird flu in China in less than a week. Last Thursday, bird flu killed a 32-year-old man in the southern province of Guangdong, BBC News reported.
Since late 2003, bird flu has killed at least 95 people, mostly in Asia. Almost all the human bird-flu infections are believed to have been due to direct contact with sick poultry. However, experts fear that the H5N1 virus may mutate into a form that's easily transmitted between humans, which could cause a pandemic.
While Australia, Canada and the United States have so far remained free of H5N1, the Organization for Animal Health warned that these three countries have a very high risk of experiencing outbreaks of the virus, Agence France Presse reported.
It's likely that migrating birds will carry the virus into northern Australia via Indonesia, while the virus will be carried into Canada and the United States from the north.
So far, H5N1 has been found in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
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