China today reported its fourth human death from the H5N1 bird flu virus this month, this time in the far northwest region of Xinjiang.
The Chinese Ministry of Health reported on its website that the latest victim was a 31-year-old woman who died yesterday. Her death from the virus follows three others over past weeks.
Experts have confirmed that the woman, a resident of the regional capital Urumqi, was infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus, the report said. She fell ill two weeks ago.
Investigators also found that she "had a history of exposure in poultry markets", the Ministry's report said. But it did not give any details.
Even before this latest deaths, Chinese health officials have been urging extra vigilance against the virus after confirming four human infections, including three deaths, during January, when the winter weather is thought to help the virus spread.
The dead victims all fell ill in areas where there had been no known outbreaks of H5N1 in birds. But they were all many thousands of kilometres from the Xinjiang death.
They were a woman who died near Beijing, another who died in eastern Shandong province, and a teenage boy who died in central Hunan province. A toddler also fell ill.
The H5N1 strain of flu remains largely a virus among birds. But experts say the danger is that the virus will evolve into a form that people can easily catch and pass to one another, risking a pandemic in which millions of people could die.
Even before the latest death, China's health minister, Chen Zhu, said that the country faces a "grim" situation in preventing and controlling human cases of bird flu.
Including the latest death, at least 35 people have been infected in China and 24 have died from H5N1.
Other populous Asian nations are also at risk. Two Indonesians died of bird flu, the health ministry there said this week, bringing that country's death toll from the disease to 115.
Reuters