The threat of a bird flu pandemic is growing daily, a top World Health Organisation (WHO) official said on Thursday, as Turkish officials stepped up efforts to halt outbreaks in people and poultry, according to Reuters. Shigeru Omi, the WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific, said Asia was still the epicentre of the threat to global health but that a pandemic was not inevitable if countries and health bodies responded quickly. "As the new cases of human infection with the H5N1 virus in Turkey show, the situation is worsening with each passing month and the threat of an influenza pandemic is continuing to grow every day," he told a two-day meeting of Asian countries and international organisations on bird flu in Tokyo. Experts say the H5N1 virus could become more active in the colder months in affected regions, and spread in east Asia as people slaughter chickens for Lunar New Year celebrations. The more it becomes entrenched in poultry flocks, the greater the risk that more humans will become infected. So far, the virus is reported to have infected about 150 people, killing 78 of them in six countries. Indonesia said on Thursday a 29-year-old woman who had bird flu, according to a local test result, had died. While it remains essentially a disease in birds, scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that could spread easily between humans, causing a pandemic in which millions could die. While there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission in Turkey, the large and rapid rise in the number of cases has worried experts. The H5N1 virus has been found in wild birds and poultry in a third of Turkish provinces. It has killed at least two children and infected more than a dozen people in little more than a week.
