China reported its fourth human death from the H5N1 bird flu virus this month on Saturday, this time in the far northwest region of Xinjiang, reported reuters. The Chinese Health Ministry said on its website (www.moh.gov.cn) the latest victim was a 31-year-old woman surnamed Zhang who died in the early hours of Friday. Her death from the virus followed three others in recent weeks. Experts have confirmed that the woman, a resident of the regional capital Urumqi, was infected with the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, the report said. She fell ill two weeks ago. "She had been to a poultry market before she fell ill," the official Xinhua news agency reported, quoting Wang Xiaoyan, a regional health official. The report gave no details. Hospitals in Urumqi, which has a population of 2 million, had been told to step up monitoring of respiratory illnesses and set up emergency teams for possible bird flu cases, Xinhua said. Xinjiang is 3,000 km (1,900 miles) from Beijing. Even before the latest death, Chinese health officials had been urging extra vigilance after confirming four human infections, including three deaths, during January, when the winter weather was suspected of having helped the virus spread. Other recent victims fell ill in areas where there had been no known outbreaks of H5N1 in birds but all occurred thousands of kilometres from the latest death in Xinjiang. They were a woman near Beijing, another in eastern Shandong province, and a teenage boy in the central province of Hunan. A two-year-old girl also fell ill but was out of danger in a hospital on Friday, Xinhua reported. The H5N1 strain remains largely a virus among birds. Experts say there is a danger that it may evolve into a form that can be transmitted among humans, risking a pandemic in which millions could die. Even before the latest death, China's Health Minister Chen Zhu said the country faced a grim situation in preventing and controlling human cases of bird flu. Including the latest death, at least 35 people have been infected in China and 24 have died from H5N1.
