HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Feb. 23 -- The bird flu outbreak in Asia poses the "gravest possible danger" of becoming a global human threat, a U.N. official warned Wednesday. But experts also said there was time to stem the impact of the disease if quick actions were taken to control the virus in animals.
Experts who gathered for a three-day conference repeated concerns that the bird flu virus could become far deadlier if it mutated into a form easily transmitted among humans. There is no evidence that this has happened, but human outbreaks this year have underscored those concerns.
| _____Avian Flu Facts_____
 Q. What is avian flu?
A. Avian influenza is an infectious disease of birds caused by type A strains of the influenza virus. The disease, which was first identified in Italy more than 100 years ago, occurs worldwide.
Q. Is avian flu contagious?
A. Yes. All birds are thought to be susceptible to infection with avian influenza, though some species are more resistant to infection than others. The first documented infection of humans with an avian influenza virus occurred in Hong Kong in 1997, when the H5N1 strain caused severe respiratory disease in 18 humans, of whom 6 died.
Q. What are the symptoms of avian flu?
A. Published information on human infection is limited to studies of the 1997 Hong Kong outbreak. Symptoms included fever, sore throat, cough and, in several of the fatal cases, severe respiratory distress secondary to viral pneumonia.
Q. How do you treat avian flu?
A. The quarantining of infected farms and destruction of infected or potentially exposed flocks are standard control measures aimed at preventing spread to other farms and eventual establishment of the virus in a country’s poultry population.
Q. How can you protect yourself against avian flu?
A. Workers involved in the culling of poultry flocks must be protected, by proper clothing and equipment, against infection. These workers should also receive antiviral drugs as a prophylactic measure.
Q. How effective is the vaccine?
A. Vaccination of persons at high risk of exposure to infected poultry, using existing vaccines effective against currently circulating human influenza strains, can reduce the likelihood of co-infection of humans with avian and influenza strains.
• WHO Fact Sheet
• CDC: Avian Flu Information
Source: World Health Organization
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"We . . . believe that the world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic," said Shigeru Omi, the World Health Organization's Western Pacific regional director, who urged international coordination to fight the virus.
"If the virus becomes highly contagious among humans, the health impact in terms of deaths and sickness will be enormous, and certainly much greater than SARS," Omi said, referring to severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed nearly 800 people in 2003.
Bird flu, which devastated Southeast Asia's poultry industry last year, has killed 45 people in the past year -- 32 Vietnamese, 12 Thais and one Cambodian. Most of those cases were traced to contact with sick birds.
"There is an increasing risk of avian influenza spread that no poultry-keeping country can afford to ignore," said Samuel Jutzi of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
Jutzi said the avian flu virus will likely persist in Asia for years because there is no easy way to eradicate it. There are measures, however, to limit its impact with coordinated efforts focusing on known risks, such as keeping ducks and migratory birds that carry the virus without showing symptoms away from farmed poultry and humans.
Minimizing the infection rate among poultry and keeping humans free of avian influenza will help prevent a global epidemic, he said. However, the challenge for many countries affected by the virus, including Vietnam, is the lack of effective diagnostic tools and surveillance systems, he said.
Officials acknowledge that another challenge in controlling avian flu is altering traditional farming and cultural practices in Asia, where animals live in close, often unsanitary quarters with people.
Bird flu's reappearance in Vietnam, where 12 people have died this year, has proven the virus has now become endemic in parts of the region. The disease recently has become more deadly than the strain found in 1997 in Hong Kong, making the situation more urgent, Omi said.
The virus also has been found in such animals as tigers and cats that were not known to be susceptible to influenza, Omi said.
He said the world was "now overdue" for an influenza pandemic, citing trends of mass epidemics occurring every 20 to 30 years. It has been nearly 40 years since the last one.
