A girl in Cambodia has died from bird flu, health officials said, in what is believed to be the first human case of the illness in the country for nine years. The 11-year-old patient became ill with a fever and other symptoms last week before being diagnosed with the H5N1 virus on Wednesday. The girl from the southern Prey Veng province was taken to a children’s hospital but died soon after being diagnosed with the illness. Her father and 11 other people have also tested positive for H5N1, Cambodia’s health ministry confirmed. Although human cases of bird flu are unusual, a highly contagious new strain of the virus has been spreading around the world since October 2021. The World Health Organization said in January that it had seen nearly 42 million individual cases in birds, adding earlier this month that the virus will “need to be monitored closely” to see if it is turning into a pathogen which can be transmitted between humans.
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