A seven-year-old girl was discharged from the hospital in Myanmar's eastern Shan state this week after being treated for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, a health official of the Burmese livestock department said. "She is the first human case (of bird flu)."
The World Health Organization (WHO) had confirmed that the girl from Keng Tung in northeastern Myanmar had been infected with the deadly H5N1 virus, The New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
She was hospitalized on Nov. 27, treated with the antiviral drug Tamiflu, recovered and was released in good condition on Dec. 12, the newspaper said.
According to the WHO, there have been 340 cases of bird flu in humans worldwide since 2003 - 208 of them fatal.
Experts believe most human victims of the virus were infected through direct contact with sick birds, but they fear that bird flu could mutate into a form that spreads more easily from person to person and spark a flu pandemic.
Asia has recently seen a resurgence of bird flu cases with human deaths reported in Indonesia and China, along with fresh outbreaks among poultry in other countries. The virus typically appears in winter months, according to reports.
