Nigerian health ministry on Monday inaugurated a technical and expert committee to tackle deadly bird flu in case the virus hits Africa's most populous nation.

Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said at the inauguration that the urgent assignment of the committee was to prepare and produce a country specific pandemic preparedness and health sector response action plan in four weeks.

Lambo said that the committee made up of epidemiologists, virologists and laboratory experts would have to search for the virus in the northern wetlands and among poultry farms and markets.

"We cannot sit back and allow the threat of the pandemic to add up to the already existing mirage of problems such as poverty, ill- health due to HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB which have already overstretched our fragile health system," Lambo said.

Last month, Nigeria had sent veterinary scientists to its northern wetlands to find out if any of the migrating birds wintering there has the virus.

Source: Xinhua