A Cambodian woman who died in Vietnam was killed by bird flu, a doctor said today.
"We have been informed that tests showed she was infected by the poultry virus," said the doctor at the General Hospital of Kien Giang province which treated Tit Sakhan before she died on Sunday, two days after she was admitted with a high fever.
Cambodian officials said they had no confirmation of outbreaks of the H5N1 virus in the country, but the World Health Organization has said it might have hit Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
Relatives of Ms Sakhan (25) said some of their chickens had died and they had eaten them with her.
"The rest of us are so nervous now because some of us are having problems breathing and pains in the ribs," her father said. "No one can tell us what kind of disease we have."
He also said a 14-year-old son died 12 days before Tit Sakhan, the first confirmed Cambodian victim of the disease which erupted anew in Vietnam in December.
The virus, which produces a high fever, coughing and acute pneumonia and kills about 80 per cent of people it infects, has now killed 45 people since it appeared at the end of 2004 - 32 in Vietnam and 12 in Thailand.
A Vietnamese man (24) was confirmed as having bird flu today.