HANOI, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Bird flu has killed a 40-year-old Vietnamese man who might have been infected after eating sick chickens, state-run media said on Thursday.

His death is the second in Vietnam from avian influenza this year.

The man died in a Hanoi hospital on Wednesday four days after being treated for lung and kidney failure, the Liberation Saigon newspaper quoted the hospital's deputy director, Nguyen Hong Ha, as saying.

The Health Ministry reported that tests confirmed the man from the northern province of Hai Duong, 50 km (31 miles) southeast of Hanoi, had the H5N1 virus.

It brought to 49 the country's toll from bird flu.

Health officials have been monitoring the man's relatives since last week after he and his family ate two chickens that had died from unknown causes. Dead chickens have also been reported in the neighbourhood.

Last month, bird flu killed a 32-year-old man from an ethnic minority group in the northern province of Tuyen Quang.

H5N1 remains mainly a virus of birds, but experts fear it could mutate into a form easily transmitted from person to person and sweep the world, possibly killing millions.

Not including the latest death, the H5N1 virus has killed 226 people among the 360 known cases. Most of the deaths are in Indonesia, followed by Vietnam, World Health Organization figures show. (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by David Fogarty)

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