Myanmar reports its first human case of bird flu, in 7-year-old girl

The World Health Organization has confirmed Myanmar's first human case of bird flu and praised the secretive country for its quick and open handling of the infection.

The U.N. body and the country's health ministry found that a 7-year-old girl from Keng Tung in northeastern Myanmar had been infected with the deadly H5N1 virus, WHO said on its Web site Friday. She has since recovered.

The WHO hailed Myanmar's transparency and swift action in alerting outside health officials about the case. Myanmar's ruling junta has been under international fire since September for killing and arresting pro-democracy protesters, with dissident groups putting the death toll at about 200.

"They handled it very, very well," said Shima Roy, spokeswoman for the organization's regional office in New Delhi. "They actually did house-to-house surveillance, especially in the area where there had been an outbreak of avian influenza in poultry."

State media reported the girl was hospitalized on Nov. 27 and released on Dec. 12 in good condition after being treated with the antiviral drug Tamiflu.

Bird flu has recently resurfaced in parts of Asia, with human deaths reported in Indonesia and China and fresh outbreaks in poultry plaguing other countries during the winter months when the virus typically flares.

According to the WHO, there have been 340 cases of bird flu in humans worldwide since 2003 — 208 of them fatal.

Experts believe most human victims of the virus were infected through direct contact with sick birds. Although bird flu is difficult for humans to catch, experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people and spark a flu pandemic.

The young victim, Nan Kham Than, was among four people suspected of having the virus during an outbreak of the disease in poultry in mid-November, the state-controlled New Light of Myanmar newspaper said. Laboratory tests confirmed that only the girl was infected.

The Health Ministry for 10 days closely monitored 689 persons who were involved in culling chickens or lived near the affected farms, and found that no other people were infected, the newspaper said.

Myanmar reported its first bird flu outbreak in March 2006 in the central part of the country, but until now had reported no human infections.

H5N1 began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003, leading to the death or slaughter of millions of birds.