A 30-year-old man from Vietnam's northern Phu Tho province died of bird flu, raising the total fatalities in the country since late December 2004 to 10, and a Cambodian person was hospitalized in Vietnam for being suspected of contracting bird flu, local newspaper Youth reported Saturday.

The local man named Nguyen Xuan Dai, who was admitted to hospital on Jan. 25 at the Tropical Disease Institute in Hanoi capital, died on Friday. He had had contact with poultry before exhibiting bird flu symptoms, local doctors said.

On Friday, the 42-year-old man named Nguyen Thanh Hung, the first case of bird flu infection detected in the northern region, was discharged from the institute after two weeks of treatment.

Two bird flu patients at the institute, a 66-year-old man from Hanoi and a 30-year-old man from Hung Yen province, are recovering gradually, said the doctors.

Now, a 10-year-old girl from southern Long An province and a 13-year-old girl from southern Dong Thap province, who have recently been confirmed to have contracted the bird flu virus H5N1 by the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City, are in critical health conditions at the city-based Pediatric Hospital No. 1. They either had direct contract with or lived in an area full of dead chickens.

On Friday, a Cambodian patient, who lives in a Cambodian town adjacent to Vietnam's southern Kien Giang province, was admitted to the provincial hospital of Kien Giang with bird flu symptoms such as high temperature and pneumonia, the paper said.

Since Dec. 28, 2004, a total of 16 people in Vietnam have been reported to contract H5N1, of whom 10, eight from the southern region and two from the northern region, have died. Altogether, 30 bird flu patients in the country have died since the disease started hitting it in December 2003.

Since January 2005, bird flu has stricken 28 cities and provinces in Vietnam, including six in the northern region, killing and leading to the forced culling of over 828,000 fowls, according to the country's Department of Animal Health.

Source: Xinhua