Margaret Chan, who is heading a team of health officials searching for ways to prevent bird flu from infecting humans, told a meeting of experts that in Asia alone more than 160 million poultry have been killed by the disease or culled to prevent its spread.
Chan noted that so far the disease has not mutated into a form that can easily infect humans, but she cautioned that 174 people had caught bird flu and 94 had died.
"We want to make sure that full exploitation of all opportunities is fully taken advantage of to prevent the H5N1 virus from developing the ability to ignite a pandemic," Chan said. "And should this effort fail, we want to ensure that measures are in place to mitigate high levels of morbidity, mortality, and social and economic disruption."
"The New York Times" today cited Vittorio Guberti, the head veterinarian at the Italian National Institute for Wildlife, as saying health officials still knew "next to nothing about this virus."
(AP, "The New York Times")