Agence France Presse

Hanoi, February 26

Vietnamese health authorities said today they have decoded the genetic map of the bird flu virus that has killed 15 people in the country and have found no sign of human genes.

The Pasteur Institute said it has sequenced virus samples taken from three of the 23 people confirmed to have been infected with the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian influenza in the country. The results from the three people, who all came from southern provinces, showed that the H5N1 virus was purely avian in origin and had not acquired any human genes.

The WHO has warned that H5N1 could kill millions across the globe if it combined with a human influenza virus to create a new, highly contagious strain transmissible among humans. The Pasteur Institute also said it had detected significant changes in the genetic order of the virus from that seen in Hong Kong in 1997, where an outbreak of the disease killed six people.

However, the Ho Chi Minh City-based organisation, which is under the control of the health ministry, said the current virus was almost identical to H5N1 samples taken from chickens in Hong Kong in 2001. Maria Cheng, spokeswoman for the World Health Organisation in Vietnam, welcomed the research and its findings. In human terms, Vietnam is the worst affected of the 10 Asian countries tackling bird flu. Fifteen people have died in the communist nation from the disease, which has also claimed seven lives in Thailand.