ASEAN health ministers meet to boost bird flu fight

YANGON, June 21 (Reuters) Southeast Asian health ministers gathered in Myanmar today to better coordinate their fight against bird flu and other pandemic threats to the region.

''These public health emergencies are beyond the capability of affected countries to cope with single handedly,'' Lieutenant-General Thein Sein said in opening the meeting of health officials from the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Thein Sein, whose own country struggled to contain its first outbreak of the H5N1 virus in March, said the 3-day meeting would seek to strengthen cooperation and rapid response against a disease now endemic in many parts of the region.

Representatives from Japan, South Korea and China are due to join the meeting tomorrow.

H5N1 re-emerged in Asia in 2003 and has killed 130 people in nine countries across the world.

Health experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that jumps easily between people and start a global flu pandemic.

Vietnam, with 42 deaths out of 93 human cases reported, has the highest casualty rate but it has not had a human case of H5N1 since last November.

Vietnam said today it planned to resume hatching of water fowl such as ducks and geese, saying the vaccination of more than 242 million birds had played a key role in containing the disease.

However, the virus continues to kill in Indonesia where a teenager was confirmed on Tuesday as the country's 39th death from bird flu. The virus is endemic in poultry in nearly all of Indonesia's 33 provinces.

Thailand, once among the worst-hit countries, has not had a human death since December 2005.

But Thai officials fear it could spread again due to lax surveillance in neighbouring Cambodia, where six people have died since 2003, and Laos, which reported a new case in poultry in May.

Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar agreed in May on a Thai-proposed action plan to boost monitoring of poultry and training of rapid-response teams.

''I wish to emphasise that in addressing avian influenza, close coordination and pooling of resources are needed for effective prevention and control activities,'' said Thein Sein, the number 5 general in Myanmar's ruling military junta.

Myanmar has said its bird flu outbreak was brought under control after thousands of birds and eggs were destroyed on hundreds of farms in the central Mandalay region.

The military government had received emergency equipment and expertise from UN agencies and neighbouring countries.

But Yangon's secretive generals were criticised for taking several days to inform the public that the disease had spread to the former Burma.

REUTERS SHR VV1514