The World Health Organisation has called for an international strategy to deal with avian flu, as further outbreaks were confirmed in more Asian countries yesterday.
The disease has now killed six people in Vietnam and one in Thailand. Thai officials said yesterday that the death of five other people may also have been caused by the virus.
Poultry outbreaks have been confirmed in Pakistan, Indonesia, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Japan.
"This can't anymore be a country by country response," said Mr Peter Cordingley, WHO spokesman yesterday. "This is now spreading too quickly for anybody to ignore."
He said funding, staff and equipment had to be provided by the international community to stop the spread of the virus.
While there was no evidence that the disease could be spread from human to human, this was the greatest fear, he said.
Mr Cordingley expressed concern that the disease could be picked up by someone already carrying influenza and this could then mutate into a new and fatal disease. If that should happen, countries may lose control of it and it could turn into a pandemic, Mr Cordingley said.
The Food Safety Authority also expressed concern about the spread of the disease. Dr Alan Reilly, acting chief executive, said it was a worrying development because people did not know how it was spreading or if it was the same virus.
However, he repeated assurances that eating chicken could not infect anyone with the potentially fatal virus. To date, humans have only been known to catch the disease by being in close contact with live chickens, he said.
Yesterday, Mr Billy Timmins, Fine Gael agriculture spokesman, called for the destruction of all Thai chickens and chicken products which had been brought into the EU since last November.
"I believe the EU's statement last week about the safety of Thai chickens is unacceptable, given that the full picture of the extent of the bird flu outbreak in Thailand is only now beginning to emerge. It now appears there may have been incidents of bird flu as far back as last November."
Mr Timmins called on the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, to establish why the EU was so slow to obtain information about the situation in Thailand.
Also yesterday, the Consumers' Association called for the removal of all "unidentified" chicken products from Irish supermarkets.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health said it was not imposing restrictions on travel between countries affected by avian flu. However, that would change if the World Health Organisation issued new advice, a spokesman said.
Both the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and the Department of Health have advised visitors to the affected countries to avoid live bird markets, farms and places where they may come in to contact with live poultry
