A teenager has died in Vietnam's Mekong Delta of bird flu earlier this month, the first death reported in the country in nearly two years.
Media reports on Thursday said the victim was an 18-year-old who worked at a duck farm in the southern Mekong Delta province of Hau Giang, but they contradicted on the date of his death.
Health Department authorities of Ho Chi Minh City said healthcare teams had been sent to monitor the situation in southern provinces after a blood sample sent to the Pasteur Institute in the East Asian country's largest city tested positive for H5N1. The teenager, working at a duck farm in neighboring Can Tho City, was admitted to hospital with high fever and respiratory problems. He died within hours, reports said. Experts were investigating whether he contracted the bird flu strain of the flu virus from ducks.
No H5N1 infection among human beings was discovered in Vietnam last year, which saw the virus killing 151,300 domestic fowl.
In August last year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned of the possibility of a major resurgence in Asia of the highly pathogenic Avian Influenza, which poses unpredictable risks to human health.
The emergence in China and Vietnam of a variant virus, known as H5N1 - 2.3.2.1, apparently able to overcome the defenses provided by existing vaccines is further cause for concern, the U.N. agency had said at that time.
The virus killed more than 340 people since it first appeared in 2003, out of which 59 deaths occurred in Vietnam, according to WHO figures.
More than 400 million domestic poultry were culled causing an estimated $20 billion of economic loss across the globe before it was eliminated from most of the 63 countries infected at its peak in 2006.
Outbreaks in both poultry and wild birds have risen progressively with renewed geographic expansion since 2008, recording nearly 800 cases in 2010-2011.
Virus circulation in Vietnam poses a direct threat to Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia as well as endangering the Korean peninsula and Japan further afield. FAO has warned that wild bird migration increases the risk of spreading the virus to other continents.
For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com
Political News
May 08, 2026 15:50 ET Manufacturing and services sector survey results and labor market data from main economies were the highlight on the economics news front this week. Factory orders and jobs report dominated the news flow in the U.S. Similarly, industrial production data from German garnered attention in Europe. In Asia, purchasing managers’ survey results from China and the central bank decision from Australia were in focus.