(Recasts with state media saying a woman had died)

By Ian Ransom

BEIJING, Jan 18 (Reuters) - A woman in eastern China has died and a two year-old girl is critically ill in northern China after becoming infected with bird flu, state media said on Sunday.

The 27-year-old woman from Jinan, capital of China's Shandong province, died on Saturday after falling ill on Jan. 5, Xinhua said, citing an unnamed official with the provincial health department. It gave her surname as Zhang.

The two-year-old girl, surnamed Peng, was found ill on Jan. 7 in central Hunan Province and taken to a hospital in her home province of Shanxi on Jan. 11, Xinhua news agency said, citing an unnamed official with the provincial health department.

After not reporting a single human infection in almost a year, China has now confirmed three cases in two weeks.

Health authorities said earlier this month a woman infected with bird flu had died in Beijing after buying ducks at a market in Hebei province, which surrounds the Chinese capital, sparking emergency checks of local poultry markets.

Experts said the case was not unexpected as the virus is more active during the cooler months between October and March, but pointed to holes in surveillance of the virus in poultry.

China's Agriculture Ministry said last week it had found no bird flu cases among poultry in Beijing or other areas surrounding the city during checks after the woman's death.

The H5N1 virus remains largely a disease among birds but experts fear it could change into a form that is easily transmitted among humans, and spark a pandemic that could kill millions of people worldwide.

With the world's biggest poultry population and hundreds of millions of backyard birds, China is seen as critical in the fight to contain bird flu.

GIRL CRITICAL

The national disease prevention and control center on Sunday confirmed Zhang, the 27-year-old woman, had been infected with bird flu, Xinhua said, but provided no other details.

China's Health Ministry said in a statement on its website (www.moh.gov.cn) that authorities had confirmed on Saturday that the two-year-old girl had been infected with the virus.

The statement did not say how the girl had become infected. There have not been any reports of outbreaks of the virus among birds in Hunan since May 2007.

"Currently, the girl's condition is critical. Shanxi health departments are currently fighting to save her with the guidance of a team of health experts," the Health Ministry said.

"All people who have had close contact with her are under strict medical observation," it said. It added that the World Health Organisation (WHO), and health authorities in Hong Kong, Macau and some other countries had been notified.

Calls placed to health departments in Shanxi province went unanswered.

WHO said China's Health Ministry had notified them of the toddler's infection, but could not provide more details. "We are staying in close contact with the Health Ministry," a spokeswoman from WHO's China office told Reuters.

Since the H5N1 virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003, it has infected 391 people, killing 247 of them, according to WHO figures released in mid-December.

The toddler's infection brings China's total to 33 human bird flu cases, of which at least 22 people have died. (Additional reporting by Lu Jiansheng; editing by Myra MacDonald)

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