India is close to developing its own vaccine against avian flu in poultry with final trials showing a 90-percent success rate. Thailand also has plans to test bird flu vaccines on humans.

"We are working towards a new model of regional collaboration among countries in Asia and the commitments we have made today would require a lot of coordination between countries and international organisations," said Anbumani Ramadoss, India's health minister.

"Countries have to coordinate to share information not only about outbreaks but also about preparedness levels," he added.

Asian nations also vowed in the declaration to bridge the lack of coordination between farm and health departments, which officials said was hampering the fight against the virus.

POOR COORDINATION

WHO officials say one major problem in fighting the virus lies in the differing focus of health and farm or animal husbandry departments.

"Basically, the target populations of the different departments have been different: one focusing on poultry and the other people," Subhash Salunke, WHO's regional advisor for communicable disease surveillance and response, said earlier.

"In these days, where zoonotic diseases have the potential to become pandemics, the health and the agriculture departments have to coordinate," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

Zoonotic diseases are animal diseases that can be transmitted to humans.

A prime example of such a lack of coordination was Indonesia, one of the delegates said.

The fight against bird flu in Indonesia was largely led by the health ministry whose officials had little idea about animal health, said the delegate, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Indonesia, along with China, is among the worst-affected countries.

India and Thailand were cited as countries where there was good coordination between health and agricultural departments.

The meeting of Asian nations comes two days after WHO confirmed the death of a 17-year-old man in Thailand due to bird flu, after an eight month lull, sparking concern about the need for better community surveillance.

At present, H5N1 remains essentially a disease of birds and is hard for people to catch. But scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans and trigger a pandemic in which millions could die.

(Additional reporting by Kamil Zaheer)

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