(BRUSSELS) - European nations are at least two years away from being able to effectively handle an influenza pandemic, such as an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, a report published Thursday warns.

"It is a question of 'when' not 'if' a pandemic will occur," said Zsuzsanna Jakob, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) which carried out the study.

The H5N1 virus has killed 167 people worldwide since it emerged in 2003, according to the latest World Health Organisation (WHO) toll.

At present the pathogen is highly contagious among poultry but is not easily transmitted among humans.

The fear is that it could acquire genes, perhaps by mingling with an ordinary flu virus in someone who is co-infected, that could make it both lethal and infectious.

Efforts to improve European readiness for a flu pandemic have been heightened since an outbreak in 2005 and the H5N1 virus is back in the headlines after recent cases among poultry in Britain, Hungary and Russia.

The new European study concludes that the EU and its member states have made major progress in preparing against an influenza pandemic but they still have at least two more years of work to do.

Additional efforts need to be made in areas such as increased flu immunisation, better systems for distributing anti-viral drugs, further research and a general improvement in coordination between EU countries.

Better treatment for seasonal flus will also make countries better prepared for a pandemic.

"We estimate that a further two to three years of sustained effort and investment are needed by the EU and its member states to achieve the level of preparedness needed to respond well to a pandemic," the Stockholm-based ECDC said in its study.

The threat of bird flu has led to "a growing perception among policy makers that a pandemic could be nearer than previously imagined," said ECDC director Jakab.

She stressed that even the regular winter influenza costs thousands of European lives each year and that tackling that problem must remain "a major priority".

"The cycle of pandemics is over decades, whereas that for seasonal influenza is every winter and needs to be tackled, year in year out. It is also clear that efforts to combat each are both complementary and inter-related".

EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said that the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, was "committed to foster a continued political drive, so that the necessary time and resources are invested to tackle the outstanding issues identified in this report".

The last major global flu pandemic happened in the winter of 1968-69 when an estimated one to four million people died worldwide after catching the H3N1 "Hong Kong flu".

The "Spanish flu" of 1918-19, which had a much higher fatality rate, killing three out of every hundred people who caught it, claimed some 50 million lives worldwide.

Technical report - January 2007: pandemic influenza preparedness in the EU - European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) report

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