BEIJING, January 18 (RIA Novosti, Alexei Yefimov) - The international community still has a chance to avoid a bird flu pandemic, Russia's most senior veterinary official said Wednesday.
Yevgeny Nepoklonov, the head of the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Oversight, is currently attending an international conference in Beijing on financing measures to control the spread of avian flu.
"We still have a chance to fully employ veterinary resources in fighting the virus, and preventing its development in to a pandemic, and its spread to humans," he said.
In the countries where the work of veterinary services is well organized and diagnostic research is being broadly carried out, the risk of the virus spreading is minimal, Nepoklonov said.
The spread of the virus must be prevented at the stage where it has still only affected birds, he said.
The problem of infection among humans has only occurred in countries where veterinary services have failed to work worked effectively, he said.
