Agence France Presse

Kuala Lumpur, July 4:

The bird flu virus remains as dangerous as ever and nations must do more to prepare for a pandemic among humans, United Nations agencies said today at a conference on the disease. Although the avian influenza virus has not mutated to become easily spread among people, the risk of a pandemic is not receding, said Dr Shigeru Omi, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) western Pacific regional director. “(The virus) remains as unstable, unpredictable and versatile as ever. Judging by its performance to date we need to be on constant alert for surprises,” he said in an opening address to the three-day meeting. The H5N1 virus “has so far resisted all attempts to dislodge it from the environment and remains endemic across large parts of the region,” he said. Despite the dangers, Omi said there was time to prevent further spread of the disease. “But countries must also get ready for the worst. This means they must speed up their work on pandemic preparedness.” The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) chief veterinary officer Joseph Domenech said bird flu must be combated at the source, and called on governments to step up animal vaccination programmes. He called on China to be more transparent on its efforts to control the spread of the virus, and curb the reported use by Chinese farmers of human antiviral drugs to treat poultry, which he said would create resistance.