Her death comes days after the government confirmed that a 32-year-old man had died from the H5N1 virus in the southern province of Guangdong, near Hong Kong, triggering alarm there.

"The epidemic situation is very severe. Right now is spring, when there is a high chance of bird flu outbreaks due to the frequent movement of migratory birds. This epidemic has not been effectively controlled worldwide," China's deputy agriculture minister Yin Chengjie told reporters.

A Belgian man who returned from China on March 5 was admitted to hospital in Brussels with symptoms of bird flu, but health officials later said he had tested negative for the deadly H5N1 strain.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), confirming the Chinese girl's death, said bird flu has infected 175 people, killing 96 of them since 2003. Victims contract the virus through close contact with infected birds.

Scientists fear it is only a matter of time before the virus mutates into a form that passes easily among people, triggering a pandemic. Millions could die and economies would be crippled for months.

"We have a time lapse before it becomes a human disease and we have to use this time for developing a plan for working on vaccines, stockpiling medicines and for educating people," WHO Director General Lee Jong-wook said on a visit to East Africa.

NEW CASES

The virus has spread rapidly since the beginning of February, killing birds in more than 15 new countries as it moves deeper into Europe and Africa.

Albania became the latest European country to report a case of H5N1. The virus was detected in a chicken in the southern Sarande coastal region, close to the border with Greece.

Indian health officials said they had contained an outbreak in poultry, but the virus was still present in bird waste two weeks after the first cases were reported.

India has culled about 500,000 birds, destroyed 1.3 million eggs and launched a mass clean-up campaign in and around the western town of Navapur, where the country's first and only H5N1 cases in chickens were reported last month.

Sales of chicken in India have dived, prompting the government to launch an advertising drive to reassure consumers.

The WHO's Lee said Africa would get a "sizeable portion" of the $2 billion which rich nations have pledged to fight the disease. The H5N1 influenza virus was detected in domestic flocks in Egypt, Nigeria and Niger last month.

There are concerns that the continent, already saddled with HIV/AIDS and malaria, is ill-equipped to combat this new threat with meagre resources.

QUESTIONS OVER CHINA DEATHS

In China, the latest human deaths have raised questions over how the virus is spreading.

The 32-year-old man is the first bird flu death in an urban centre in China and occurred in an area where there have been no reports of the disease in birds. He was believed to have contracted the virus at a poultry market.

The dead girl, from Anji County, had visited relatives who kept poultry, and some chickens raised there had died during at least one of her visits, Xinhua said.

Zhong Nanshan, director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, said both victims might have been infected by chickens carrying the virus but not sickened by it.

"There is a possibility there could be human cases of H5N1 in places without outbreaks of the disease in birds. That is, there could be chickens carrying the virus but which are not sick themselves and they can infect people," Zhong told reporters in Beijing.