~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Pneumonia claims another victim in Vietnam

HANOI - A Vietnamese nurse died on Monday from a fast-spreading pneumonia virus, bringing the worldwide death toll from the disease to 22 with hundreds of people sick in hospital. The latest deaths include three in Hong Kong, officials there said.

Doctors at the Vietnam-France Hospital, where the outbreak in Vietnam's capital began, said a 43-year-old Vietnamese nurse who worked at the facility and who was one of three patients there in critical condition, died on Monday afternoon. The illness, called severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), killed a Vietnamese nurse from the same hospital on March 15 and a French doctor on March 19. More than 50 people are infected with SARS in Vietnam.

All three medical staff were apparently exposed to the virus after treating a U.S. businessman who was admitted with flu-like symptoms at the end of February and later died in Hong Kong where he had been taken for treatment. The virus has spread to Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada and Germany after first showing up in southern China late last year. Suspected cases have been reported in the United States, Britain and Australia. In Hong Kong, 247 people are infected. Vietnam has sought to offer reassurances that the situation is stable.

"For the time being, the epidemic has basically been put under control and contained," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Reuters - March 24, 2003.