“Roche has agreed to donate Tamiflu for a second stockpile,” Margaret Chan, assistant director-general for communicable diseases at WHO, said at the sidelines of the conference.

The new donation will be given to countries that may not have resources to build their own stockpiles and will be used to “help reduce the spread of infection,” Chan said. She did not provide any more details.

Roche has already donated enough of the drug to the WHO to treat 3 million people and company officials have said that it is expected to make 150 million treatments this year.

As the conference opened Tuesday, there was speculation that donors were boosting their previous commitments. Dr. David Nabarro, the U.N. coordinator on avian and human influenza, said he heard that total pledges may exceed the US$1.5 billion (euro1.2 billion) target.

“If we surpass it, what that does is it gives confidence to the governments who have been doing the hard work that there are people interested in backing them,” he told AP.

The World Bank has said that 45 percent of the funding would be spent in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Laos - countries where the H5N1 virus is already endemic. – AP

Most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds, but experts fear the virus could develop the capacity to transmit easily between people, sparking a possible flu pandemic which could kill millions.

Chan said there had been criticism that the WHO was diverting funds from diseases like polio and HIV/AIDS to fight a pandemic that hadn’t even occurred.

perhaps the first time we are getting a lot of warnings and signals from nature,” she said.

Dr. Shigeru Omi, WHO’s regional director for the Western Pacific Region, said the recent outbreaks in Turkey, where four children have died, showed the need for heightened surveillance in poultry.

“Surveillance is crucial, because in my view, the outbreaks affecting transmission among the chickens were there for some time without being noticed,” he told The Associated Press.

Turkey’s deputy undersecretary for agricultural affairs said the country was working hard to control the outbreaks but he said the situation did not amount to a “big problem.”

“We don’t have a big problem now, we have outbreaks and cases, but every outbreak, every case is small ... not a big problem,” Nihat Pakdil told the AP.

He said the country was considering setting up buffer zones around big farms, wetlands and lakes to prevent contact between wild birds and domestic poultry.

The funding conference follows a global bird flu coordination meeting held two months ago in Geneva, which brought together participants from 100 countries.

The Beijing conference is co-sponsored by the World Bank, European Commission and the Chinese government.