# 2636
For several days we've been following the story of the 8-year-old girl named Bui Thi Thao from the Dien Trung commune in Thanh Hoa province.
News reports have her recovering from a confirmed H5N1 infection.
Now, we get word that her 13-year-old sister, Bui Thi Thuong, died last week with symptoms consistent with avian flu.
At the time, H5N1 wasn't suspected, and so no lab tests for the virus were done.
Bui Thi Thuong is very likely a victim of the bird flu virus, but officially, will probably never be recognized as such.
This report from Reuters.
Vietnam H5N1 patient's sister dies with flu symptoms
08 Jan 2009 02:26:56 GMT
Source: Reuters
HANOI, Jan 8 (Reuters) - The sister of Vietnam's first confirmed bird flu patient of the year died with flu symptoms last week, and the director of the district hospital where she was treated said she probably also had avian flu.
"We suspect that it was bird flu that caused her death, but we cannot be 100 percent sure because there was no sample for tests. At the time we thought her illness was something else," Truong Thi Mau, director of the Ba Thuoc district hospital, told Reuters.
Ba Thuoc is about 150 km (94 miles) south of Hanoi in Thanh Hoa province. Earlier this week, authorities confirmed that the 13-year-old girl's younger sister was in hospital with an H5N1 virus infection.
Both girls had eaten duck and chicken raised on her family's farm, Mau said.
The 13-year-old girl developed high fever and severe cough on Dec. 25 and died in the district hospital on Jan. 2, Mau said. Her 8-year-old sister was still in hospital.
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