Bird flu kills 11-year-old Vietnamese boy

Bird flu has killed an 11-year-old boy in northern Vietnam, the country's 52nd death from the disease, a health official said Monday.

Health officials are not sure how the boy from Ha Nam province became infected with the H5N1 virus, said Nguyet Lap Quyet, director of the provincial health department.

His family raised chickens at their home, and some of the birds became sick in late February, Quyet said. After several of those birds died, the family slaughtered and cooked one of the remaining ones.

The boy became ill in early March and was admitted to the pediatric hospital in Hanoi on March 12, the official said. He died there two days later.

Test results showed that he was infected with the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, Quyet said.

The boy was the 52nd person to die of bird flu in Vietnam since the virus began raging through Asian poultry stocks in late 2003 and occasionally jumping to humans.

Earlier Monday, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung scolded farmers for lax reporting of bird flu in their poultry, saying this was partly responsible for four earlier bird flu deaths among humans this year. He called for renewed vigilance against the disease.

"Farmers do not report to authorities when their birds die. Some keep eating sick or dead birds. This has caused four deaths this year," Dung said in a statement posted on Vietnams' Animal Health Department Web site.

Bird flu has struck farms in 13 provinces nationwide so far this year, forcing authorities to slaughter thousands of birds. The central province of Quang Nam was the latest hit when 300 ducks tested positive for the H5N1 virus over the weekend.

The H5N1 virus remains hard for people to catch, but health experts worry the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily among humans, sparking a pandemic. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.

At least 235 people have died worldwide from the virus, according to the World Health Organization. Vietnam's latest death was not included in WHO's tally.