There is no country perfectly prepared for the next flu pandemic, the director of the World Health Organisation's epidemic and pandemic alert and response team has said.
Dr Mike Ryan told a meeting of public health doctors in Dublin yesterday that no country was "perfectly prepared by any means" for the threat, which could occur at any time.
However, he pointed out that the Republic had done quite a lot to strengthen its basic public health infrastructure, and he was aware it had a very comprehensive pandemic preparedness plan in place.
Experts agree another flu pandemic is inevitable, but say it is difficult to predict when it will occur.
"We have a pandemic once every 10 to 30 years. It's been 38 years since the last pandemic," Dr Ryan said.
"It's like the lottery. Just because we didn't win it for two years doesn't mean we are any more likely to win it this year," he added.
He said the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which has claimed 186 lives since 2003, could still mutate to generate the next flu pandemic.
"This particular virus, given its geographic spread, given the way it changes and it's moving and mutating, it's the best and most likely candidate to do that. But no one can say when.
"There's no country that's perfectly prepared by any means.
"The issue is whether people have invested in getting ready for the inevitable sort of shock that a big epidemic or pandemic will have to the system," he added.
Avian flu was probably the biggest threat we face in terms of epidemic diseases right now, Dr Ryan said, but he said there were also lots of others.
"I mean, Sars can come back," he said.
"All public health threats are essentially local when they start and they can become bigger. Sars started as a very small event in southern China and eventually affected 27 countries, so one has to keep an eye on all of these."
He said new regulations come into effect on June 15th which put a legal requirement on countries not just to be prepared to detect and contain diseases at source but to tell other countries about them within 24 hours.
The Irish pandemic influenza expert group has estimated that in "a worst-case scenario" the next pandemic could result in two million people in the Republic becoming infected, 78,000 people being hospitalised and around 53,000 deaths.