Hong Kong's experience in fighting bird flu and Sars is a model for the world in preparing for a possible flu pandemic, the World Health Organisation's top official in infectious diseases said.
Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun, the WHO's director of infectious disease surveillance and response and Hong Kong's former director of health, said that measures put in place in the city after the 1997 bird flu outbreak had proved a success.
Those include the H5N1 virus surveillance programme in Hong Kong chicken farms and live chickens imported from the mainland, segregation of live chickens from water fowl in both wholesale and retails outlets and improvement in market hygiene.
Water fowl are natural carriers of the avian influenza.
Hong Kong was the first place in the world to report human infections of the H5N1 virus. Eighteen people were infected during the 1997 outbreak and six died.
Dr Chan, who was at the helm in handling the outbreak, said: 'Some people had complained against those measures for causing them inconvenience, but as time goes on, these measures have been proven a success.
'While Southeast Asia is now troubled by bird flu, Hong Kong is still very safe.