Hanoi (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Vietnamese health officials said on Tuesday that a 35-year-old woman from Hanoi is the fourth person to be confirmed with bird flu in the past week.
The woman, who works as a garbage collector, was admitted to the hospital Thursday and test results Monday showed she had the H5N1 virus, said Nguyen Duc Hien, director of the tropical disease unit at Hanoi's Bach Mai Hospital.
Tuesday's Pioneer newspaper reported that the woman did not eat poultry, but that she worked in markets where poultry were sold.
In the past week, three people from northern Thai Binh province were discovered to be infected with bird flu, including a 69-year-old man who died Wednesday. A 21-year-old man and his 14-year-old sister also have contracted the disease.
Bird flu has killed a total of 46 people in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia since it surfaced in mass outbreaks on Asian poultry farms in 2003, then spread rapidly last year among birds across a wide swath of the region, devastating its poultry industry.
