PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Cambodia on Monday kicked off a week-long bird flu awareness blitz following the country's seventh death from the H5N1 virus.

The campaign, which features marches and programmes conducted by government officials and bird flu specialists from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), will target rural areas considered most at risk for outbreaks.

"This is to raise awareness about the dangers of bird flu to people in rural areas," the FAO said in a statement.

"The marches are being held in districts that are considered as being at high-risk for bird flu."

The campaign, which will take place in eight rural provinces, follows last Thursday's bird flu death of a 13-year-old girl in eastern Kompong Cham province on the border with Vietnam.

She was Cambodia's first human bird flu case this year, and the seventh fatality since outbreaks were first recorded four years ago.

A team of investigators from the health ministry, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Pasteur Institute have gone to the area to determine whether there were any more cases.

Cambodia has been praised by the

United Nations for its rapid action against bird flu, which has helped spare it from the human and poultry deaths suffered by its neighbours.

But health officials also warn that the virus could go undetected in the countless small family farms where most of Cambodia's poultry are raised.

Border controls have also been tightened to prevent poultry from being smuggled from Thailand and Vietnam.

The WHO says the deadly H5N1 strain has infected 288 people and killed 170 of them, mostly in Southeast Asia, since 2003.