Beijing, the most severely infected city during the 2003 global SARS epidemic, has reported a possible death from avian flu, as an unusually cold winter saps resistance in the Chinese capital.

Huang Yanqing, who died at 7:20 a.m. yesterday in a Beijing hospital, handled the innards of nine ducks bought from a market in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, state-owned Xinhua News Agency said today in its English service. She had contact with 116 people, Xinhua said, citing the local health bureau.

The Geneva-based World Health Organization said China's health ministry informed it today of the death, adding that it is prepared to offer technical assistance, according to a statement sent on PRNewswire.

Health and agricultural authorities culled 377,000 poultry in eastern China's Jiangsu province in December after finding the H5N1 strain of the bird-flu virus in chickens. Areas where the poultry were raised had been disinfected, other birds were placed under quarantine, while the transport of poultry was restricted.

Contact with migratory birds carrying the virus is one possible cause of infection in poultry. Dead chickens in Hong Kong tested positive for the H5N1 strain last month and India culled more than 250,000 birds in its northeastern region to contain an outbreak.

The H5N1 strain of the avian-flu virus has afflicted 392 people worldwide since 2003, according to the WHO. Almost two of every three cases were fatal.

China has had 31 bird-flu cases in humans and 21 deaths since 2003, according to the WHO. A 24 year-old-man who died in Beijing in 2003 was initially thought to have died from the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. Subsequent laboratory tests confirmed he had died from the avian flu, making him the first fatality in the Chinese capital from the disease.

Huang, 19, contracted her disease on Christmas Eve and was hospitalized on Dec. 27, according to a statement today on the Beijing health bureau's Web site.

A nurse recovered from the fever she'd developed after coming in contact with the deceased woman, Xinhua reported.

China's government was criticized by the WHO for its slow response to the 2003 SARS outbreak, which infected 8,098 people globally, killing 774, almost a third of the cases in the Chinese capital. President Hu Jintao fired health minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing mayor Meng Xuenong in 2003, after admitting that the city had covered up the number of SARS cases in the city.

An emergency meeting was convened yesterday in Beijing to handle the bird-flu case, Xinhua said without elaborating.