Even in Hong Kong, where awareness about avian influenza is high, there are still incidents of inappropriate behavior. Chickens imported from China are subject to rigorous health checks, and smuggling them into Hong Kong without these checks poses a health threat.

We are looking to this conference for a return, if you like, to the spirit of SARS.

There's a lot of anxiety (in Europe). The result of this could be that governments might focus on domestic preparedness and forget the fact that ground zero is Southeast Asia.

And what we have now, almost certainly we think, is sick chickens who are showing no symptoms, and that is very, very bad. They are silent carriers of the virus.

This is now spreading too quickly for anybody to ignore it.

We are very keen to see generic versions of this anti-viral drug available, but we will not pressure Roche to do so (relinquish its patent).

Public health systems now, where there's the money, are much, much better.

The fact that we've now had human cases in Indonesia certainly makes us think again about the possibility we'll see human cases in China.

This is a terrible tragedy and we will do all that we can to help.