The World Health Organization has confirmed that a 6 year old Cambodian girl has died of bird flu. She is the 18th person in Cambodia to contract the H5N1 form of the flu virus that is proving deadly to humans, even although it is not yet being passed from human to human. Of the 18 people in Cambodia to have contracted this form of flu, 16 of them have died.
The first human death from bird flu was observed in 2003 and since then there have been 565 recorded cases and 331 deaths. Clearly if this avian flu virus were to mutate in a way that enabled its transmission from human to human, this could prove to be the deadly pandemic that we managed to avoid with swine flu.