Two United Nations agencies have warned that bird flu is "a crisis of global importance", that will not be eradicated in the near future.

A joint statement from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health says the virus represents "a permanent threat" to human and animal health.

The statement comes as Thai officials confirmed that a woman who was feared to have contracted bird flu from her daughter had actually come into contact with dead chickens.

The two UN agencies have released a new set of guidelines on combating and preventing outbreaks of bird flu following recent outbreaks in Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

The new guidelines stress the importance of surveillance and early detection, something which the agencies say governments in East Asia are not doing well enough.

(CRI September 28, 2004)