Frankly, there will be a pandemic, sooner or later.

Let’s wait until there is a confirmation.

This is a really serious global situation.

In the Thai case we have seen the prime minister ask one of the deputy prime ministers to head an inter-ministry group. The high level of political attention is key.

Most people see this as a long-term challenge. The short-term money is needed because we have some services that are stretched, but we need a long-term approach.

I saw excellent work being done by Thailand.

Fingers-crossed it’s going to be a good-sized pledge.

It may well shift from Turkey into other European countries. The good news is that in Turkey it has only involved a small number of people.

I am saying that the recent activities by Turkey’s Ministry of Agriculture, particularly the culling and communication work, is good.

We cannot afford to be in any way complacent. The fact that there are human cases of bird flu being reported at quite regular intervals now means that the disease is still quite serious.

Because it is moving and because we believe wild birds are implicated, predicting where it’s going to flare up next is a very tricky thing to do, and being able to know the scale of...

I don’t know why they are not sharing those samples.

Unfortunately, we cannot tell when the mutation might happen, or where it might happen, or how unpleasant the mutant virus will turn out to be. Nevertheless, we must remain on high alert for the possibility...

Avian influenza is a big threat. It is spreading throughout the world.

Their view is they would like to feel that other countries who have samples or material would share them freely with Chinese scientists. They are putting a lot of importance on the notion of reciprocity...

Only two mutations are needed for it to become easily transmissible among humans.

This is not the start of the pandemic. The start of the pandemic starts when there is human to human transfer, confirmed and sustained.

Some of the challenges we face now are really quite dramatic and call for a lot of technical expertise.

Fingers-crossed, it’s going to be a good-sized pledge. I think most of the countries are aware of the seriousness and the need to move money to poor countries.

I’m sad to say we have not had a significant influx of cash for bird flu over the last two years since we’ve really started to get worried about it.

Something generally disturbing is going on at the moment. It’s certainly in the bird world, and it’s pushing up against the human world in a serious way.

They’re what’s required to help countries put in place their influenza programs and to get much better and effective control. They’re also monies that are required by the international organizations.

We expected it to move, but not any of us thought it would move quite like this.