July 4, 2005

UN experts to draft bird flu strategy amid global concerns
 

Senior representatives and experts from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Organisation for Animal Health and the World Health Organisation would be meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to draft a strategy to contain bird flu.

The main concern was to prevent bird flu from spreading between humans if the virus mutated.

The meeting's objectives would include identifying practices in livestock production and marketing in Asia that might threaten human health.

The WHO said that mingling of humans and backyard farm pigs and poultry would increase the chances of animal and human bird flu viruses mixing and mutating into a new virus.

The experts would also assess the effectiveness of existing regulations on production and marketing of live animals for food, in minimising bird flu risks to humans.

Practical guidelines on how to improve these regulatory controls would then be provided.