Hundreds of health experts will gather tomorrow to try to hammer out a global plan to battle bird flu and stop the virus triggering a human pandemic that could kill millions.
The three days of talks in Geneva hosted by the World Health Organisation is the largest such meeting since the virus began to spread in late 2003.
From financial help for some of the world's poorest countries to ways of improving detection, officials aim to shore up defences against the H5N1 bird flu virus, which is already endemic amongst poultry in parts of Asia.
"There is still a window of opportunity for substantially reducing the risk of a human pandemic evolving from H5N1 by controlling the virus at its source, in animals," Joseph Domenech, chief veterinary officer at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said in a statement.
The virus is known to have killed 63 people in four Asian countries and led to the culling of 150 million birds worldwide.
It has recently been detected in birds in eastern Europe and experts expect it to reach the Middle East and Africa in the near future.
The virus remains hard for people to catch and is passed on almost exclusively through human contact with birds.
But scientists say it is steadily mutating and could acquire changes that make it easy to spread from human to human, potentially triggering a pandemic in which millions could die and the global economy could grind to a halt.
"An influenza pandemic has the potential to cause more death and illness than any other public health threat," the US Health and Human Services department says in its new flu plan.
James Adams, a senior World Bank official due to make a presentation at the Geneva talks, has said discussions will be held on setting up a global trust fund which he said would require initial donations of $300 million-500 million.
There will also be discussions on creating regional stockpiles of vaccines and antiviral drugs to help deal with any outbreak.
A number of groups are working on developing a vaccine against H5N1. In an editorial, Britain's Lancet medical journal called it "make-or-break time for the human threat of H5N1 influenza". "There remains no reliable early warning system in place across large parts of the world. This vacuum in surveillance poses the most serious threat to human health," it said.