A senior World Health Organisation official has urged the world's governments to start drafting emergency plans for a possible pandemic stemming from bird flu, warning that a deadly outbreak was perilously close.
Dr. Shigeru Omi, the WHO's western Pacific regional director, told the opening of a three-day conference on bird flu that health agencies around the world urgently need to better coordinate their fight against the virus.
"We at WHO believe that the world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic," Omi said. "If the virus becomes highly contagious among humans, the health impact in terms of deaths and sickness will be enormous, and certainly much greater than SARS."
"This is why we are urging all governments to work now on a pandemic preparedness plan - so that even in an emergency such as this they will be able to provide basic public services such as transport, sanitation and power."
The conference is focused on long-term strategies for eradicating the virus, which devastated the region's poultry industry last year as it swept through nearly a dozen countries.
The disease has killed 45 people - 32 Vietnamese, 12 Thais and one Cambodian - in cases largely traced to contact with sick birds.
Experts have repeatedly warned that the H5N1 bird flu virus could become far deadlier still if it mutates into a form that can be easily transmitted between humans, sparking a global pandemic that could kill millions.
Scientists and representatives from more than two dozen countries met in southern Ho Chi Minh City, near the Mekong Delta where the latest outbreaks emerged this year.
Animal health officials said there was still time to stop the disease from developing into a pandemic, by controlling transmission at the source.
"This means addressing the transmission of the virus where the disease occurs, in poultry, specifically free-range chickens and wetland dwelling ducks, and thus curbing the disease occurrence in the region before it spreads to other parts of the world," said Dr. Samuel Jutzi, of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization.
"There is an increasing risk of avian influenza spread that no poultry-keeping country can afford to ignore," said Jutzi, director of the FAO's animal health and production division.
Still, many countries affected by the virus lack effective diagnostic tools and surveillance systems needed for early warning and timely response, he said.
In recent outbreaks, bird flu has become more pathogenic than the strain found in 1997 in Hong Kong, making the situation more urgent, Omi said.
The virus has proven to be "very versatile and very resilient," and has even been found in animals such as tigers and cats that weren't believed to be susceptible to influenza, he added.
Before the conference, Vietnam's top veterinarian acknowledged that the country has not been able to change traditional Asian farming methods blamed for the development of some diseases, such as keeping various species of animals in the same area.
"It's difficult to change their habit but we need to educate them," Bui Quang Anh, head of the Department for Animal Health, said Tuesday. "Once they understand and follow all the instructions, we can prevent the virus from spreading."
Big commercial farms learned from the first outbreak and applied preventive measures, such as strict hygiene standards and regular disinfection, Anh said. The most recent outbreak was only reported in small farms, which failed to apply preventive measures, he said.
New regulations should include separating ducks from chickens, requiring ducks to be raised in cages and improving hygiene measures, Anh said. Ducks should not roam freely in rice fields as they do now in the southern Mekong Delta, he added.
AP