United Nations agencies moved on two fronts today to combat the threat of a bird flu pandemic, bringing forward the introduction of new public health provisions and providing wide-ranging guidelines for preventing the spread of the virus by people working closely with poultry such as farmers, sellers and even sporting bird owners.

Beyond the prospect of a human pandemic, the bird flu crisis is not only an immediate, short-term problem but is likely to be a continuing emergency that will last several years and inflict “tremendous damage” to bird populations, and domestic poultry in particular, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today.

The top United Nations coordinator for bird flu today stressed the importance of national plans for tackling a possible human pandemic of the disease, acknowledging that while the task is difficult and complex, the effects of a human-to-human outbreak would be so dramatic it would be “wrong” not to make coordinated preparations.

A team of United Nations bird flu experts arrived in Sudan today at the request of the Government to investigate a suspected human case which, if confirmed, would make Africa's largest country the second on the continent after Egypt to report human infection with the feared and often deadly H5N1 virus.