A six-year-old girl and a doctor have died after contracting swine flu, taking the number of deaths in Britain linked to the virus to 17, health officials said yesterday.

Chloe Buckley, from London, and a doctor from Bedfordshire in eastern England, Michael Day, were named as the latest victims of the virus.

Their exact cause of death was not immediately known, the National Health Service (NHS) said.

A post-mortem will be carried out to determine if the girl had any underlying health conditions.

Dr Simon Tanner, NHS London's regional director of public health, said she had caught the virus in Britain.

He described her death as "sad" and added: "It will probably not be the last that we have in this pandemic."

Dr Day died on Saturday in hospital. A subsequent swab test revealed he had swine flu although it has not yet been established if this was the cause of his death.

His family members, staff and any patients who have been in recent contact with him are being assessed to determine if they have swine flu symptoms.

If so, they will be offered Tamiflu anti-viral drugs as a precautionary measure.

The first British patient with swine flu but no underlying health problems died on Friday. The family has requested that no further details about the patient, from Essex in eastern England, are released.

Nearly 10,000 Britons have been confirmed with swine flu but hundreds of thousands more are thought to have the virus, although in most cases the symptoms are mild.

Health authorities have said a swine flu vaccine will also be available from next month and will eventually be available to everyone in Britain.

The World Health Organisation said yesterday that all countries will need access to vaccines against swine flu as the pandemic is "unstoppable."

A group of vaccination experts concluded after a recent meeting that "the H1N1 pandemic is unstoppable and therefore all countries would need to have access to vaccines," said Marie-Paul Kieny, WHO director on vaccine research.

Health workers should be at the top of the queue for vaccination, since they are required to keep health systems going while people continue to fall sick, she added.