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Updated Tuesday, December 1, 2009 3:53 pm TWN, AP

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Vietnam reports 5th bird flu death this year

HANOI, Vietnam — Bird flu has killed a Vietnamese man, the Health Ministry reported Tuesday, following warnings from the World Health Organization about a potential combination of the bird flu and swine flu viruses.

The 23-year-old man died last week, two days after being admitted to a hospital in the northern province of Dien Bien, some 310 miles (500 kilometers) north of Hanoi, the ministry said in a statement on its Web site.

Test results confirmed he was infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus. He fell sick after eating duck blood pudding.

Last week, the WHO warned that with fresh H5N1 bird flu cases reported in poultry in Egypt, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, the risk of bird flu and the H1N1 pandemic swine flu virus mixing was heightened. Egypt also has recently reported human cases.

Scientists fear that bird flu — which remains hard for people to catch but kills about 60 percent of those infected — could combine with the current swine flu virus that spreads easily among people but kills a low percentage.

The bird flu virus has killed 57 people in Vietnam, including five this year, since it began raging across Asia in late 2003. At least 262 people have died from it worldwide, according to WHO.

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