s being hobbled by stark differences between the region's diverse countries, health experts warn. While Vietnam and Thailand have been hailed as poster adverts in the fight against avian influenza, new cases in hotspot Indonesia and population giant China have highlighted concerns the disease will be hard to stamp out.
Many Asian nations have learned much since the H5N1 strain erupted here in 2003, spreading as far as Europe and Africa last year, but gaps remain and the threat of a pandemic remains real, epidemiologists say.
New human infections in China and Laos and recent animal cases in Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Hong Kong are reminders that the virus "is still entrenched," said World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Peter Cordingley.
"If you take a broad look at the region, I would say it's pretty much the same as last year, when we saw bird flu move all the way to Africa.
"We're seeing signs of that already. We're seeing human cases in Egypt, and inside Asia the virus is obviously becoming quite active."
Bird flu is now popping up in new areas, and risk factors for transmission have increased, said He Changchui, the Asia-Pacific head of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) based in Bangkok.
"Last year it seemed we had more association with migrating wild birds, but this year we are also finding trade and the movement of poultry across borders played a very large role," he said.
"The virus doesn't know any borders, and due to globalisation and increased border trade and more regional integration in goods flows and people travelling, we can easily carry a virus from one country to another."
Yet while some countries, aided by international aid and know-how, have set up extensive surveillance networks, new laboratories, vaccination drives and education campaigns, other countries lag far behind.
"Without any doubt Indonesia is ground zero globally for bird flu," said Cordingley about the archipelago nation that leads the world's death toll with 63 out of the 167 bird flu deaths confirmed by the WHO.
"The virus has a firm grip on large parts of the country and we're very concerned about Indonesia," he said, speaking from Manila.
The FAO's He agreed that while "there are some capabilities there, Indonesia is too big a country, and due to the decentralization, more reporting and streamlined information is required."
Cordingley said "some countries have done very well, such as Vietnam and Thailand. But they're seeing cases in poultry, so clearly there's still a big fight to be fought in those two countries." Vietnam reported Friday a new outbreak among ducks in the southern Mekong delta that had been hatched despite a two-year ban that has only just ended.
China, Indonesia and Vietnam all face similar risks because of their high densities of people and poultry, said Jeff Gilbert, the FAO's senior technical adviser on bird flu in Vietnam.
"Everything is turning over so fast that you have new and susceptible flocks all the time," he said.
But even the best efforts of rich nations do not guarantee safety, he said. "Japan and Korea certainly jump on it from a height," Gilbert said. "They're doing the Rolls Royce approach, and if they're doing that and still having issues, then the poorer countries will definitely have issues."
Surveillance remained patchy in Cambodia and Laos, which this week said a 15-year-old girl had became its first human case of bird flu, said He.
"In Laos there are remote regions without very good surveillance systems in place," he said. "You don't know if something happened there."
