All European Union countries have plans to fight a possible bird flu pandemic, health officials said today, as tests confirmed the deadly strain of the virus had reached Croatia.

International cooperation is a key to preventing a bird flu pandemic after efforts to bring it under control failed in Southeast Asia, where the disease has killed at least 60 people, World Health Organisation officials said today.

Southeast Asian agriculture ministers have agreed to launch a three-year plan next year aimed at stamping out the menace of bird flu in the region – a move they hope will win enough international aid to halt the disease before it becomes a catastrophic global epidemic with the potential to kill millions.

International health experts today unveiled a multi-pronged strategy against bird flu calling for Asian governments to overhaul backyard farming practices and vaccinate poultry to prevent the disease from becoming a human pandemic.

Drug companies will not be able to make enough vaccine to prevent the next global flu pandemic, which health officials fear may be triggered by a viral strain originating in birds, a senior World Health Organisation (WHO) official said today.

After almost a year of trying to bring Asia’s bird flu under control, World Health Organisation experts are now warning that the disease is the most likely candidate to cause the world’s next pandemic, with the possibility of as many as seven million deaths.

THE discovery of a lethal strain of bird flu in Chinese pigs has taken the world closer to a human flu pandemic but there is no need to panic yet, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.

Health experts have warned that the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu appears to be entrenched in parts of Southeast Asia after a teenager in a Malaysian village hit by the virus was hospitalised with flu symptoms.

Nearly 500 people were in quarantine in China’s capital Beijing and a southern province today as authorities raced to contain a small eruption of SARS before a national holiday puts millions of travellers on the road.

Two sisters in Vietnam became the latest victims of Asia’s bird flu crisis today, as ministers from across the region convened an emergency meeting with international health experts in the Thai capital.

TAIWAN health authorities said a military medical researcher had contracted SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), sparking alerts across Asia of a possible resurgence of the killer virus.

A Taiwanese scientist who tested positive for SARS today failed to follow safety guidelines and wear protective gloves and a gown while studying the virus, a World Health Organisation Official said.

THE World Health Organisation lifted its travel warning against Beijing yesterday, giving a clean bill of health to the capital of the nation where the SARS outbreak began.

THE World Health Organisation yesterday cancelled its warning against travel to Taiwan, more than a month after it put the Taiwanese capital on its list of places with a risk of spreading SARS

The World Health Organisation today praised China for improved transparency and a “strong political commitment” to combating SARS, which it said has diminished as a global threat.