Asian countries battling a bird flu virus that threatens to create a human pandemic that could kill millions need urgent help from the wealthy West if they are to succeed, a 28-nation conference said on Friday.

“The threat is real and the potential is very high” for a pandemic, Samuel Jutzi of the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization told a news conference at the end of the three-day conference on bird flu.

“The longer the virus continues to circulate in poultry production systems and ducks, the higher is the probability of infection of humans,” he said in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s commercial hub.

All 28 nations sought “external support,” Jutzi said, but worst-affected Vietnam is the only one to have appealed for help publicly.

“Our financial capacity is limited. We are trying our best,” Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat told reporters.

Senior U.N. officials at the conference have complained about what one called “an alarming lack of commitment” from rich nations in the fight against the H5N1 virus.

They did not expect firm pledges, but even so the dire warnings of a pandemic did not appear to sink in, said FAO’s Vietnam representative, Anton Rychener. “I heard many of the donor country representatives saying they didn’t get a sense that there is a real emergency,” he said.

He complained that rich nations spent $3 billion on subsidising their farmers over the three days of the conference. “If we attract one percent, it’s $30 million for avian influenza. I’d be happy to see half a percent,” he said.

Donors would have to cough up $100 million for the short-term fight against the virus, the conference said, and some officials said the sum could rise to $300 million. That did not include long-term restructuring and compensation costs that could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to estimates cited by the FAO, birdflu cost Asian farmers and agricultural industries $10 billion in 2004.

ANOTHER HUMAN CASE

Communist Vietnam has been hit hardest by the virus, which erupted across much of Asia at the end of 2003 and has killed 46 people - 33 Vietnamese, 12 Thais and a Cambodian.

It now has another case, a 21-year-old man whose younger sister may also have caught the virus, officials said.

The family did not raise chickens, but the man consumed raw duck blood before the Lunar New Year festival this month, said local official Tran Quoc Du. “He drank the blood, but his sister did not. After that, he had a mild fever,” Du told Reuters. Other family members were being tested for the virus.

Last month in the same province, a man died after drinking duck blood and tests confirmed he had bird flu.

Almost all other people known to have caught the virus got it from contact with sick birds. It has killed more than 70 percent of people infected.

But while Vietnam has borne the brunt, the H5N1 virus was now also endemic in Thailand, Indonesia and China, the FAO said.

The experts no longer talk about eradicating the disease, but of containing it before it mutates into a form that can pass between humans and sets off a pandemic.

The 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic killed between 20 million and 40 million people worldwide and was thought to have originated in birds.

OVERHAUL FAMILY FARMS

The conference agreed this meant the way Asia raises poultry - usually around the house and free to wander among other animals - would have to change, Jutzi said.

This was a key long-term issue - how to overhaul poultry farming so birds are raised away from other animals and in pens so they can’t mix with wild birds or ducks believed to be natural carriers of the virus.

Implementing biosecurity measures - everything from building closed chicken sheds and erecting bird netting to chemical baths and vaccines - is hugely expensive in poor countries.

Nevertheless, the FAO is adamant that no matter how big the task, money must be found and age-old farming practices reformed.

“If we want to control avian influenza there may be people who lose their livelihoods,” said FAO animal health chief Joseph Domenech.

The meeting also agreed surveillance systems needed to be enhanced, regional networks strengthened and gaps in the knowledge about the virus filled, Jutzi said.