China announced late on Wednesday that a 35-year-old woman from Jianyang city, in the southwestern province of Sichuan, had become the nation's ninth confirmed human case of bird flu and its sixth fatality from the disease.

No outbreak of the disease among poultry had been reported in Jianyang city, with the closest H5N1 outbreak recorded in Sichuan's Dazhu county 245 kilometers (150 miles) away.

"We have asked the Ministry of Health to clarify if the death was linked to the Sichuan outbreak (among birds) reported earlier," said the Beijing spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), Roy Wadia.

"We are waiting to hear back from them."

Wadia expressed concern that seven of the nine human cases in China had occurred in areas where no poultry outbreaks had been reported.

"Human cases should not be the sentinels for animal outbreaks," Wadia said.

"Ideally we should be able to find the animal cases first and allow health authorities to scour the region to find human cases."

However Wadia said Chinese authorities had acknowledged this problem and emphasised it was not just confined to China.

"This is a concern be it in Beijing, Vietnam or Turkey," Wadia said.

China has reported over 30 outbreaks of bird flu among animals since the beginning of last year, with most appearing since October.

In the latest human fatality, the woman, surnamed Wei, showed symptoms on January 3 and was taken to hospital on January 10 with fever and pneumonia. She died the next day.

The health ministry said that between December 25 and January 5, eight households sharing the same courtyard as Wei found some of their poultry sick or dead.

Local health authorities have put those who had close contact with Wei under observation but so far no abnormal symptoms have been reported, it added.

The virus has killed around 80 people since re-emerging in 2003, all but four of them in East Asia.

An international bird flu conference ended Wednesday in Beijing, with donor countries and organizations pledging 1.9 billion dollars to fight the virus worldwide.

At the meeting, health authorities strongly urged all nations to step up surveillance among animal and human populations.

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