The Institut Pasteur du Cambodge on Monday confirmed a three-year-old girl from Kampot province to have the seventh human case of avian flu so far this year, health workers said yesterday.

The young girl, meanwhile, remains in “critical condition”, said Dr Denis Laurent of Kantha Bopha Hospital.

Leng Kim Ny, chief of the girl’s home commune of Ang Phnom Touch, said yesterday that she first fell ill on February 3 and was sent for treatment at Kantha Bopha in Phnom Penh on the 6th, after local treatment failed to improve her condition.

He added that recently some 100 chickens had died in the commune.

Ministry of Health officials have been spraying girl’s house and village to try to kill the virus and were attempting to educate villages through pamphlets and announcements on speakers not to touch or eat sick poultry, he said.

So far, five of the year’s seven confirmed human H5N1 cases have been fatal.

To contact the reporters on this story: Justine Drennan at [email protected] and Mom Kunthear at [email protected]