Two more people have died of swine flu in Vietnam, taking the death toll so far to 39.

The Ministry of Health is concerned by the deaths since they were in the northwestern mountainous region which has not reported any cases for a long time.

The first patient, a 54-year-old woman from Mai Son District in Son La Province who also had diabetes and arthritis, died at the Hanoi-based National Institute of Infectious and Tropical Diseases on November 2.

A 32-year-old man from Hoa Binh Province died a day later after having high fever and cough. He bought drugs to treat himself but it did not work.

He was visiting relatives when he was admitted to the Tay Ninh Province General Hospital before being transferred to Ho Chi Minh City’s Tropical Diseases Hospital but doctors’ efforts to save him proved futile.

Dengue fever treated at the Hanoi-based National Institute of Infectious and Tropical Diseases

There was also one death from dengue fever. The head of the Pediatric Department at Hanoi’s Bach Mai Hospital, Nguyen Tien Dung, said a child died of the mosquito-borne disease on November 4. The eight-year-old from Hanoi’s Hoang Mai District was brought to the hospital with vein collapse and lesions in the liver and other organs.

Hanoi has reported six deaths from dengue as against two from swine flu.