A girl in Vietnam has become the latest person to contract bird flu, health officials said on Monday.
Her elder brother was confirmed to have the disease last Friday, and is now in a critical state in a Hanoi hospital.
Vietnamese officials also said a 69-year old man who died last week had bird flu, the 14th fatality since the latest outbreak started in December.
Officials in Thai Binh province, where the latest cases came from, are concerned how to control the disease.
Overall, bird flu has killed 46 people in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia since December 2003.
Vietnamese officials said the latest human to catch the disease - 14-year-old Nguyen Thi Ngoan - had eaten chicken at a friend's house during Lunar New Year celebrations earlier this month.
Her 21-year-old brother - who also ate the same chicken - is already in the hospital after testing positive for the disease on Thursday.
"He is now in a very critical state," said Nguyen Duc Hien, the director of Hanoi's Institute of Tropical Diseases.
Pham Van Diu, director of Thai Binh's Preventive Medicine Centre, said the latest cases were very worrying.
"Thai Binh is an agriculture province with many farmer families involved in backyard poultry farming. It's therefore very difficult to deal with. The war on bird flu is very complicated," he told the Associated Press.
H5N1 BIRD FLU VIRUS
The resurgence of bird flu has renewed scientists' fears that the virus could mutate into a form that is easily spread from human to human.
The World Health Organisation warned last week of "the gravest possible danger of a pandemic".
During an international conference on bird flu in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam promised to overhaul its poultry industry, as part of efforts to stamp out bird flu.
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