The director general of the World Health Organization told health ministers from around the world, gathering in Ottawa for a two-day meeting on avian flu, that there was no warning for the three pandemics of the last century and this time must be different.

Dr. Lee-Jong Wook told the conference of politicians that early warning systems must be running in all countries, to warn of the spread of the next major pandemic. Many expect that human pandemic to emerge from the current avian flu now in Asia and Europe.

"These will warn us so we can quickly dispatch the anti-viral stockpiles and take other public response measures that will stop or limit the spread of infection," said Wook. "All countries need to be able to report cases without a delay, that information has to be quickly produced and shared among the international community."

Good communication, he said, will be the key to success or failure. It will be the best way to put populations on guard and help communities act responsibly.

Conference discussions will take place along four themes: the intersect of animal and human health concerns; the need to build surveillance and scientific capacity in affected countries; risk communications and the development and access to antiviral drugs and vaccines.

The meeting comes as there are renewed calls for a live wild bird import ban in the European Union after the lethal bird flue strain H5N1 was found in a parrot in Britain.

The British government has called on the EU to halt the trade in exotic birds from anywhere in the world and the European Commission is expected to decide soon whether to implement such a ban.

But as the conference kicked off, the head of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said attacking the base level of the outbreak is the best course of action.

Jacques Diouf said spending so much on stockpiled antiviral drugs and medical masks for a human disease that doesn't yet exist and so little on controlling the animal disease that could be the pandemic's precursor doesn't make sense.

"It doesn't look to us quite rational that we would be ready to spend so much money on the second line of defence and then on the first line of the combat field, we're not putting even $100 million," Diouf said in an interview with Canadian Press.

Health ministers and politicians from more than 30 developing and developed nations have convened on Ottawa to take part in the 1 1/2-day long meeting to advance global pandemic readiness.

Infectious disease expert Dr. Neil Rau told Canada AM that the biggest issue for this conference is to figure out how the developing and underdeveloped world will handle the pandemic if it starts there.

Rau believe it will be another year or two before bird flu cases are reported in Africa, which he says could become a global cause for concern.

"And if you look at how we're doing with AIDS in Africa so far, and how badly we've been performed in terms of helping with the issue of AIDS, which is also a pandemic over a longer period of time … it really worries me. What happens if we have pandemic flu showing up in Africa?" he asked.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Paul Martin told the conference that no country can go it alone on the issue, and that the world has to come together.

Several months ago Diouf's organization asked for $10 million to help contain the poultry outbreaks that experts fear may be the beginning of a human pandemic.

But so far only the United States has made a commitment of $6 million. Other countries have expressed an interest in contributing but Diouf said it has not materialized.

Approximately 140 million birds have been killed by the virus or killed because of the disease, with economic losses in the range of $10 billion.

Cases of human infection with the virus have occurred in Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and Vietnam and there have been 121 confirmed human cases, with 62 deaths.