(For full coverage of the flu outbreak, click [nFLU]) (Recasts with statement from officials' meeting) By Darren Schuettler BANGKOK, May 7 (Reuters) - Asian health ministers meeting in Thailand on Friday will discuss producing vaccines and antiviral drugs in their region to combat the H1N1 flu virus and other potential pandemics, officials said. "Vaccines are one of the prime tools in the face of the pandemic, and there is a capacity for vaccine production in the ASEAN +3 region," said Prat Boonyawongvirot, a senior official in Thailand's Ministry of Public Health. Health ministers from Japan, China, South Korea and the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) are due in Bangkok to coordinate their fight against the virus, also known as swine flu. Asia has seen far fewer confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus, which has killed 44 people in Mexico and the United States, and spread across Europe. But Keiji Fukuda, a top U.N. health official, urged Asian governments to stay alert for a possible wider pandemic that "could infect a third or more of the world's population in the next several months, in the next year". "Even if the illnesses appear relatively mild on an individual level, with large numbers of infections on the global population, you can get large numbers of seriously ill people," said Fukuda, acting assistant director-general for the World Health Organization (WHO). Of the 2,099 people infected with the virus in 23 countries, the WHO has confirmed 5 cases in New Zealand, two in South Korea and one in Hong Kong. After battling SARS and bird flu in recent years, Asian health officials said they were better prepared to handle a pandemic, with stronger surveillance systems, laboratories and stockpiling of antiviral drugs. But they agreed more needs to be done. Aside from sharing technology on vaccines and antiviral drugs, health ministers will also discuss expanding and sharing stockpiles of drugs and other essential supplies, said a statement after the senior officials' meeting on Thursday. They also recommended greater cooperation on surveillance, sharing information, border disease control, and discussing exit screening for people leaving affected areas. Thai soldiers and police guarded the luxury hotel where the officials met on Thursday, aiming to prevent any recurrence of the violence that forced an Asian leaders' summit to be cancelled in April. [ID:nBKK452863] FULL PANDEMIC? David Nabarro, the U.N. influenza coordinator, worried governments might get complacent because many people in harder-hit countries had experienced only mild symptoms from the flu and recovered without medicine. He said the most serious flu pandemic of modern times, which killed some 40 million people in 1918-19, started with a milder early wave of infections. "We have to maintain vigilance and understand that the virus we are dealing with could easily change and become much more ferocious. We cannot let down our guard, regardless of what we are seeing at the moment," Nabarro told the meeting. Fukuda said there was no decision yet on whether to revise the WHO's pandemic alert, now at 5. He said it could drop to 4 or rise to the top of its 6-point scale, which would activate emergency response plans to fight the virus. "I think all these possibilities are open right now, although again it's quite likely we could go to Phase 6 in the near future," he said. (Additional reporting by Kittipong Soonprasert; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
Malaysian opposition lawmaker Tian Chua is arrested as he arrives at the Perak state legislature in the northwestern city of Ipoh, 200 km (120 miles) north of Kuala Lumpur May 7, ...
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