A teenage girl has become the third victim of the so-called 'bird flu' in Hong Kong.

The 13-year-old was admitted to the Prince of Wales Hospital almost a month ago complaining of the standard flu symptoms - fever, chills and a sore throat.

On Sunday the hospital announced that she had died of multiple organ function failure.

She is the third person to die from the H5N1 virus which has so far claimed the lives of a three-year-old boy and a 54-year-old man. There have been eight confirmed cases of people catching the virus, which was only discovered in birds, especially ducks and chickens, earlier this year.

The ordinary flu virus

The girl's death comes a day after the World Health Organisation's leading expert on influenza arrived in Hong Kong to help develop a vaccine.

But Daniel Lavanchy, the World Heath Organisation special envoy on the influenza crisis, said a vaccine against the 'bird flu' could not be produced before the middle of 1998.

A team of experts is trying to determine whether the virus can be transmitted between humans or only from poultry to humans.

Hong Kong's chicken markets have been closed for cleaning

Previous flu viruses which originated in the poultry farms of southern China, like the Hong Kong flu which killed 700,000 people worldwide in 1968, were eventually transmitted from humans to humans.

The emergence of 'bird flu' has added to Hong Kong's tourist industry problems, which has already been battered by the Asian economic crisis.
 

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