A person from Vietnam´s northern Quang Ninh province (close to China-Vietnam border) has become the first local HIV carrier to be infected with bird flu virus strain H5N1.

    Specimens from a HIV carrier from Bai Chay town, whose initialsare H.T.B, were tested positive to H5N1, local newspaper Labor on Thursday quoted the Institute of Tropical Diseases in Hanoi as saying.

    Local health officials did not disclose further information about the patient such as sex and age.

    After being admitted to the Bai Chay Hospital on March 21, the patient was transferred to the institute, and then the Quang Ninh General Hospital in the province. Bird flu symptoms have gone, but the HIV carrier is physically weak.

    The Preventive Medicine Department under Vietnam´s Health Ministry confirmed 44 human cases of bird flu infection between Dec. 16, 2004 and April 13, of whom 16 died. The institute is treating three bird flu patients, and all of them are in stable condition.

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HANOI, (AFP) - A 21-year-old woman in northern Vietnam has tested positive for HIV and bird flu in the country´s first such case, a health official said.

The woman, whose name was withheld, lives in Quang Ninh province, 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Hanoi. She tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus early this week, said doctor Nguyen Hong Hanh, deputy director of the provincial hospital.

"She was admitted with high fever towards the end of March in the Quang Ninh hospital and at first tested positive for HIV," Hanh said.

The poultry vendor(?) was later, "transferred to the Institute of Tropical Diseases in Hanoi where doctors then took samples to be tested at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in the capital."

She returned to Quang Ninh and, "is now being treated by us," Hanh said, adding that the results of a second test confirmed she had bird flu.

"According to the information we received from the health ministry, this is officially the first simultaneous case of bird flu and HIV in Vietnam," Hanh said.

It was also the first confirmed bird flu case in the province, he said, adding that "right now she has no fever and is in a stable condition."