Malaysia said today that Asean ministers meeting this week in Manila will consider a draft regional plan to combat the deadly bird flu virus which has killed 65 people in Southeast Asia.

Malaysia, which chairs an Association of Southeast Asian Nations taskforce on avian influenza, said the plan would be tabled at the meeting on Thursday amid growing concern over the disease.

The ministers will discuss ways "of managing the situation and set up a regional plan where Asean members can work together to deal with this serious problem," said Malaysia's agriculture minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

Muhyiddin described the spread of the disease as "worrying", and emphasised that countries had to "work to the fullest to deal with the situation".

"We have seen millions of chickens being already culled in Indonesia and a number of lives lost, so it is not a small matter," he told reporters at a livestock forum in Kuala Lumpur.

Muhyiddin said ministers and officials would tackle all aspects of the problem, including concerns over the spread of the disease by migratory birds.

"These transmigratory birds flying into the various bird sanctuaries could be a problem. So we will have look into all the various areas of concern."

Surveillance system

The Asean taskforce drafted the plan after agriculture ministers last year decided there was a need for a regional response, said the director-general of Malaysia's veterinary services department, Hawari Hussein.

The blueprint looks at how to create an effective surveillance system to detect the disease, systems to rapidly contain and eradicate the virus and the development of an effective communications system among countries, he said.

Muhyiddin said the plan could be presented at an international conference on avian influenza planned for later this year.

Asean will have its "common plan to bring to the conference and see what the rest of the world will do to respond to that," he said.

Bird flu has claimed lives in Asean member nations Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, and forced massive culls of affected poultry.

Malaysia had an outbreak in 2004 in poultry in Kelantan but stamped out the disease and has declared itself free of the virus.