The bird flu leading to a global pandemic influenza is just a matter of time and the world must get well prepared for it, warned the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General in Beijing Tuesday.

"It would be foolish to think the pandemic would not come and not prepare for it. I don't know when or where it would come, but if looking at the signs and the history of avian flu, you would see it is just a matter of time," said Dr Lee Jong-wook in an interview with Xinhua.

The virus would change, or mix with other influenza virus, and become a new pandemic virus, he said.

Lee said that in the past, people did not have scientific skills to know how the virus was changing, or how much it was changing.

"But now we have the scientific means to know what is happening, so this time we should be better prepared, and reduce the number of people who are dying or suffering from the pandemic."

Avian flu is not an issue of Asia, but a global issue. "There was a big outbreak in Holland, a small outbreak in Germany, and a few outbreaks going on in Turkey," said the director-general, "No place is safe. We are sharing the risk."

Lee is in Beijing attending the International Pledging Conference on Avian and Human Pandemic Influenza which convened Tuesday.

Nearly 700 participants from about 100 countries and 20 international organizations are expected to make donations for the global fight of bird flu on Wednesday.

However, no matter how much fund will be raised, it is just input from outside. "I think much bigger sum has to be mobilized by individual governments. In the past, the majority of fund of epidemic control came from their own domestic resources," Lee said.

Apart from financial support, the Switzerland-based drug company Roche has donated 3 million treatment courses of Tamiflu to WHO. "These drugs are meant to be rushed to the bird flu outbreak rapidly if there is, like putting out the fires as early as possible," Lee told Xinhua.

And the company has also agreed to donate another 2 million treatment courses of Tamiflu recently, which would be "rushed to the countries who need them but have no stockpile of their own," according to Lee.

The second donation will be sent to WHO's regional offices for deployment, said Margaret Chan, WHO's assistant director-general for communicable diseases, at a news briefing during the conference.

In addition, both Lee and Chan expressed concern of the bird flu situation in Turkey, where 20 human cases including four deaths have been reported.

The weather is cold and animals are brought inside homes, posing more danger to the people in exposure to the disease, said Chan.

WHO is holding daily tele-conference with Turkey and its neighboring countries including Iraq and Iran for sharing information, she revealed.

And WHO is very careful to know whether there is any human-to-human transmission of the bird flu virus. "Even though this virus has not acquired the ability to transmit from human to human, the DNA sequence of the virus from China and that from Turkey is different. We are analyzing the individual DNA sequence and comparing them to see if there are any changes," said Lee.

And also in Turkey they are trying to find out whether this virus has acquired the ability to infect the people without causing sickness. "There have been some reports of the human cases without showing any symptom or sign. If it is a new thing, we are also looking into this aspect," he said.

But so far there is no human-to-human transmission, the official noted.

As of today, there have been about 150 confirmed human cases of bird flu throughout the world, including 80 deaths.

China reported 32 bird flu outbreaks in animals from January to December 2005, leaving a total of 154,600 birds dead and 22,571,200 culled, and eight human cases throughout the year.

Source: Xinhua