Vietnam finds HIV carrier infected with bird flu
Thu April 14, 2005 8:20 AM GMT+05:30

HANOI (Reuters - A 21-year-old woman has been infected by both the
deadly HIV/AIDS virus and bird flu, the first such case in Vietnam,
health officials said on Thursday.

The Health Ministry said two other patients have been diagnosed with
the H5N1 virus in the northern provinces of Ha Tay and Hung Yen
between April 2 and 8 but no deaths were reported.

The latest findings brought to 41 the total patients having bird flu
in Vietnam since December 2004, 16 of them had died, the ministry
said in a statement.

Nguyen Van Thich, head of the Centre for Preventive Medicine in the
northern province of Quang Ninh, said the woman, the first to be
diagnosed with both bird flu and HIV in Vietnam, used to work at a
hairdressor's shop. She was hospitalised in late March with fever
and coughing.

"She is still very weak," he told Reuters, adding that the woman has
been treated at a provincial hospital.

Quang Ninh province bordering China has one of the highest number of
HIV carriers in Vietnam, most of them drug addicts and prostitutes.
Vietnam has reported 68 human infections of the H5N1 virus since the
disease first hit Asia in late 2003, killing 36 Vietnamese.

Twelve Thais and three Cambodians have also died of the virus that
the World Health Organisation says has the potential to mutate into
a form that could pass easily between humans and cause a pandemic in
which millions could die.

Doctor Hoang Thuy Long, former head of the National Institute of
Hygiene and Epidemiology, told a government meeting on Wednesday
that most of the infected people in Vietnam, including several
family clusters, had contact with sick birds.

"Even though so far the transmission mechanism of the disease
remains unclear, the avian influenza H5N1 type in Vietnam shows no
sign of being spread directly between human and human," Long was
quoted by state-run Quan Doi Nhan Dan daily as saying

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