Act as though a pandemic influenza will start tomorrow. Don’t think we can wait around and not worry it won’t start for six months or one year. Once, it starts it is too late to...

Vietnam can provide some valuable lessons to the rest of the world, not only in its fight against a potential epidemic, but also in its donor and government cooperation.

It simply is telling us that the virus may be changing the way it interacts with humans. It does not tell us that the risk of a mutation that causes the pandemic is increasing or...

There’s consensus. There’s clarity. There’s cash. There is much better coordination. We should be able to deal with the bird flu epidemic much quicker and … if the pandemic comes, it will be smaller as...

Every country in the world now needs to have its veterinary services on high alert for H5N1 to be sure they are not caught unawares.

The last thing I want is to be truly alarmist. But the world is not really ready to deal with an avian pandemic.

A lot of that money is now being spent in countries, in Indonesia, in Vietnam, in Cambodia, in countries in central and eastern Europe such as Turkey, Nigeria, and also Central Asia.

The flu-casters would draw out the maps and keep people engaged at regular intervals … beaming it from the WHO bunker.

I just think that every country in the world now needs to have its veterinary services on high alert for H5N1, to try to make sure that they don’t get caught unawares and find that...

What is important to me is there has been consensus and clarity, (and) much better coordination. We’ll be much quicker to control avian influenza as a result.

A lot of that money is now being spent in Indonesia, Vietnam Cambodia, countries in central and eastern Europe, Turkey, Nigeria and Central Asia.

The virus is moving quite substantially into new locations. My attention is pretty much equally divided between Europe, the southern Balkans and Black Sea area, Africa and south Asia.

Prevention is going to be cheaper and more effective than waiting for the pandemic to occur.

We did discuss in China as well the importance of trying to restrict movements of chickens from areas that are infected, including across borders.

It is quite feasible that H5N1 could mutate. The fact that it has taken some years should not lead you to believe that we are through the worst.

Perhaps the most important thing that I would wish to happen is that Chinese officials at all levels who have been working on this issue for many, many months … have a chance to interact...

There are some quite tricky challenges facing everybody working in Crimea and I shall be engaging with various government people.

We expect the next influenza pandemic to come at any time now.

That outbreak was noted by the villagers, but was not handled because they didn’t report it in time. We have to work harder on helping to convert knowledge into practice.

We are losing the battle against this particular avian influenza outbreak. It is a very nasty bird flu virus.

Diseases do not know borders. They do not know borders between villages. They do not know borders between countries.

We cannot have a vaccine against a pandemic virus until the pandemic virus appears.

There will be an influenza pandemic sometime, but we don’t know when. It could be mild, it could be severe, it could be extremely severe.

The village knew about the dangers from these diseased birds, but somehow that knowledge wasn’t turned fully into practice.

Detecting and culling infected birds is still the key, and for that we have to compensate the owners of chicken whose flocks are killed. And we have to limit interaction between humans and birds, which...

We must still maintain utmost vigilance for and preparations for the next human influenza pandemic.

And then there will be an interval of perhaps six months until we have a reasonable quantity of vaccine.

The real issue will be how the money is going to be managed and how we are going to coordinate.

I think there is a reasonably good chance … that people will congeal around a set of basic principles and elements for what will become an international program which can then be presented to the...

The pace of fatalities appears to have fallen off quickly. But it is as yet unclear whether this is because the virus has modified or Turkey’s approach has been successful.

The more I find out about an influenza pandemic and the lack of readiness, the more I am concerned. But I am more hopeful about the scope for international cooperation.

The virus now has very definitely found its way into the African subcontinent, and we have a different situation that has emerged with even more H5N1 in our world.

We viewed this as the beginning. I’m not for a minute suggesting that the amounts of money we are talking about at the Beijing meet are all that’s going to be needed.

It seems to kill a very large proportion of the birds that it infects. That is having a major impact on the livelihoods of smallholders in this region, partly because they are losing the birds...

What we’ve seen today is that the world really does care and wants to respond effectively to the threat of avian influenza, and a possible human pandemic.

There is too much H5N1 virus in very close contact with humans in this region. We need, in a painstaking and careful way, to reduce the opportunities for this virus to be jumping across into...

Unfortunately I can’t give you any precise information as to when the mutation of H5N1 to a form that can be transmitted between humans will actually take place.

Unless we are working as one, we don’t get a good result.

If there is delay in getting culling teams out, delay in any part of the chain, even weeks, that could have great implications for the virus to spread.

We are watching very closely to see how the disease associated with bird flu, when it hits humans, is evolving.

It is certainly within the next six to 12 months; it could be earlier.

It’s certainly spreading in a remarkable way.

The money is only the beginning. The process of preparing is going to require very careful monitoring and review, and that’s the work ahead.

It may be more important to concentrate on the essentials of life for those who are living than it is to focus on the treatment of those who are sick.

To scale up vet services is a pretty tall order. They haven’t had the level of investment they should have had during the last three or four decades. And you can’t suddenly turn a switch...

The threat is still there. Avian influenza will continue to come to Ukraine … health services must be ready and prepared to deal with people who are infected with avian flu and to be ready...

The $1.9 billion shows that the world cares greatly about the issues we face and that governments want to be sure that there is enough cash available to do everything they have to do to...

I don’t want to scare anyone but the truth is this virus is undergoing changes slowly. This warning that nature is giving us has to be heeded.

H5N1 is causing a massive epidemic of lethal avian influenza.

African countries and the United Nations system must contribute resources to make up for this, in the hope that development partners will react rapidly.