Pneumonia was the cause of death of a 12-year-old girl in a village in central China where an outbreak of bird flu was confirmed earlier this week, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday, according to Reuters. The one-paragraph report quoted local health officials in Hunan, where the some 545 chickens and ducks died from the H5N1 virus. Scientists fear the disease, which is endemic in poultry in China, could mutate into a form that can pass easily from human to human, possibly triggering a pandemic.
