BANGKOK, Sept 9 (AFP) - A Thai man who raised fighting cocks has died of bird flu, becoming the 28th fatality in an outbreak of a lethal strain of the virus that has swept Asia this year, a health ministry official said Thursday. Spokeswoman Nitaya Chanrung Mahabhol said the 18-year-old from eastern Prachin Buri province died of bird flu symptoms Wednesday after he fell ill late last month.
"It was confirmed that he died of bird flu," Nitaya told AFP, adding that the man had been stricken with the H5N1 form of the virus.
"His 30 fighting cocks died and he fell sick with flu symptoms but had declined to go to hospital," Nitaya said, adding he was eventually admitted Saturday.
A 16-year-old was placed under surveillance by health officials as he was close to the man who died and was known to have handled the fighting cocks, the spokeswoman said.
Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, China and Malaysia have all reported outbreaks since July after the worst of the outbreaks of H5N1 left eight dead in Thailand and 16 in Vietnam and crippled poultry industries earlier this year.
Vietnam late last month confirmed that three more people had died from the disease -- bringing its toll to 19 -- more than four months after declaring that bird flu had been contained. Thailand's toll now stands at nine.
In late July Thailand confirmed resurgent outbreaks in chickens and other birds had hit 21 of the kingdom's 76 provinces but said culling measures had been swiftly taken and bird flu was largely under control.
Vietnam's toll may have risen to 20, as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Tuesday that the death of a Vietnamese child from a strain of human influenza raised a "very high level of suspicion" that it was in fact caused by bird flu.
The UN's health agency said it had received "informal reports" of a laboratory-confirmed death in a hospital in Hanoi attributed to the "A H5" type of human flu.
Vietnam's health ministry denied that the child had been infected with H5N1, but the WHO stressed in a statement that H5N1 was the only strain within the H5 subtype that has ever been shown to cause disease in humans.
The latest outbreaks of bird flu in poultry were reported last month in Malaysia, where a 10-year-old boy and a government veterinarian were hospitalised with suspected bird flu. Both were cleared of the disease this week.
The WHO fears that H5N1 could mutate into a highly contagious form that triggers the next global human flu pandemic.