The patient was laboratory confirmed as an H5N1 infection by China CDC on February 20, 2008. He is a 42 years-old Chinese male living in Guangxi, China with a history of 6 days of fever, cough and dyspnea. Two weeks before hospital admission, he bought 3 hens at an open-air market, one of which died later at same day. The remaining birds exhibited symptom of chicken attack next day. The patient killed and cooked the birds, and ate them together with other family members who later did not experience any clinical symptom. On admission, the patient was febrile with a temperature of 40.3uC, had infiltration of lower left lung lobe based on chest radiography, bilateral lower lung moist rales, and substantially reduced oxygen saturation. He was placed on a ventilator and treated with antibiotics, spasmolysis, corticosteroids, and the dissipatation of phlegm and fluids. Despite treatment, the patient presented with function damage of multiple organ (lung, heart, liver and kidney) on the second day after admission, and died 59 h after admission, and 8 days after the onset of symptoms. Throat swabs were collected and performed RT-PCR and rRT-PCR detection at the day patient died. No antiviral drug treatment was given since the patient died before finally laboratory diagnosis.