Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
The avian flu that has been spreading rapidly in Asian bird populations may now be transmissible from human to human, the World Health Organization said this week. Four members of the same family in Vietnam contracted the disease last month, and three died. Previous victims caught the disease from birds. If the virus has in fact now mutated to spread among humans, officials fear a repeat of the horrific epidemic of 1918, when the Spanish flu killed some 40 million people worldwide. Overall, the avian flu has claimed at least 13 lives.
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