An 8-year girl is in a critical condition in hospital in Chengdu with the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Health chiefs said on Friday she was receiving treatment at Suining Municipal People's Hospital in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

She is the third person to contract bird flu in Sichuan and the 18th in the country.

Twelve of the country's 18 cases have proved fatal.

Su Lin, chief of the Emergency Response Office of the Sichuan Provincial Department of Health, said the latest victim was in a critical condition.

The girl, surnamed Sun, is from Tangjia Township in Suining, a city in central Sichuan.

She showed symptoms of fever and pneumonia on April 16. Poultry deaths occurred in her house before she fell ill. "Investigators report the deaths of chickens in several farm houses nearby, too," Su told China Daily.

Tests on the girl carried out by the Sichuan Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed she was suffering with bird flu. China's national CDC confirmed she had the H5N1 strain on Thursday.

She is confirmed to be infected with bird flu in line with the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Chinese official standards, said the Ministry of Health.

Governments and health departments at all levels in Sichuan took immediate prevention and control measures after the case was revealed.

Nearly 150 people who had been in close contact with the girl have been put under medical observation by local health authorities.

"Every day, medics take their temperatures and observe whether they have symptoms of a cold. So far, no one has shown any abnormal symptoms," Su said.

The Ministry of Health has reported the case to WHO, Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan Province, as well as several countries.

Sichuan's first two human bird flu cases occurred in January, and both patients died. The first case involved a 35-year-old woman surnamed Wei in Jianyang in western Sichuan. She was a poultry slaughterer.

The second case involved a 29-year-old grocery store owner surnamed Cao in Jinhua Town in the suburbs of Chengdu. She had not been in contact with any dead poultry before falling ill.

(China Daily April 29, 2006)