Bird flu is not going to disappear soon, the World Health Organization said yesterday in New Delhi, as South Asian health officials agreed to cooperate in preventing the disease from spreading in the region.

　　"The outbreak is not going to be contained in one or two months," D.N. Kumara Rai, head of the WHO's communicable disease department in Southeast Asia, told The Associated Press.

　　The battle to control bird flu suffered a setback yesterday, with Vietnam confirming its 21st human case of the deadly disease and Thailand saying a previously unaffected province had been hit.

　　Hours after Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra urged the public not to panic if more outbreaks appeared, an official said the virus was found in a fighting rooster in a northeastern province and had re-emerged in other parts of the country.

　　The virus has also jumped to humans in hardest-hit Vietnam and Thailand, killing a total of 20 people

　　Officials in both countries recently claimed their outbreaks seemed to be waning.

　　Thaksin said earlier that Thailand, where six people have died, would be free of bird flu by the end of February.

　　In Vietnam, where 14 people have died, a 15-year-old boy was hospitalized in northern Thanh Hoa province. Doctors said yesterday it was unclear how he was infected.

　　In New Delhi, Rai spoke on the sidelines of an emergency meeting of officials from the seven-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to discuss ways to protect their region from the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus sweeping across East Asia

　　Health experts say people infected with the disease contracted it from sick birds, but have repeatedly expressed concern that the virus could link with the human flu virus, and become transmittable through person-to-person contact.

　　Rai repeated those fears yesterday.

　　"What we are afraid of is that if avian flu virus mixes with the human influenza virus, this will result in a new virus that is readily transmittable from human to human," Rai said. "Once this occurs, we are really, really afraid of a global pandemic just like the Spanish flu that caused almost 40 million deaths," in 1918.

　　Meanwhile, South Asian officials passed a resolution calling for stricter surveillance on the borders, and announced the establishment of a New Delhi-based center to identify and deal with the disease. There have been no human cases in the region.

　　"We are in the vicinity of another region which is reeling under this epidemic and it might affect us," Indian Health Secretary Prasad Rao said.

　　The meeting brought together health, agriculture and livestock officials from the seven countries, the first time that they had met to face a possible health crisis. The political enmity between India and Pakistan has often thwarted SAARC health care programs.

　　(The Associated Press)