In one market near where I live in Hong Kong there's a vision of the future.
It's a stall that sells the chickens the Hong Kong housewives like to buy still alive to ensure their freshness.
But the stall-holder and her birds are behind a pane of glass that stretches from floor to ceiling.
She is in effect encased in a large box.
She's almost completely separated from her customers. When they buy a chicken she kills it, plucks it and wraps it up before passing it through a small gap in the wall.
The customer's contact with her or her birds is reduced to a minimum.
These are the kind of measures the scientists say are needed throughout Asia if we're to have any realistic chance of protecting ourselves from bird flu - in addition to the stockpiles of anti-viral drugs like Tamiflu or the yet to be produced anti-bird-flu vaccine.
But in reality we're not going to see measures like that across Asia.
'A plane ride away'
While Hong Kong might be what the World Health Organization (WHO) describes as the 'gold standard in terms of surveillance and measures designed to prevent the emergence of bird flu', poorer nations in South East Asia just don't have the same kind of resources to throw at the problem.
That is the biggest issue facing Asian governments.
The bird-flu virus H5N1 has been circulating in this region for at least two years.
"Hong Kong will be as vulnerable as Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh city"
It has been detected in many parts of Vietnam and Indonesia and some parts of Cambodia, China, Thailand and, according to the WHO, possibly in Laos.
There have been human cases reported in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia.
And no matter how hard the more affluent parts of this continent like Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea or Japan try to protect themselves they know that they're only a couple of hours' plane ride from infected areas where if human-to-human transmission got under way, we might not know until it's too late.
Some scientific modelling has indicated that if a strain of bird flu with pandemic potential emerged, the health authorities would have three weeks to move in with anti-viral drugs and vaccinate everyone at risk.
The thinking is that this could stop the disease, or at least slow down the spread.
But the truth is that in many rural areas in Asia chickens roam the streets and back alleys of small homesteads and there is almost constant contact between humans and birds - and there is almost no surveillance at all.
People don't seek medical help in hospitals or clinics because of the cost.
Slaughter
"While the modelling may be sound, there may be a huge gap between theory and reality,' says the WHO's spokesman in the Western Pacific Peter Cordingley.
He said that, in the event of a global pandemic, "Hong Kong will be as vulnerable as Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh city".
The WHO says Asia needs $160m in the short term to build up laboratory capacity, training and improve surveillance, particularly in poorer nations.
That is in addition to the $100m needed for work on the animal front.
So far the organisation says it's been operating pretty well on a shoestring but it's confident that renewed concern about the problem among developed nations means that things will now improve.
But it's not just about finding the money for the medical response.
Most experts accept that in 1997 a global pandemic was averted after an outbreak of Bird Flu in Hong Kong killed six people because the authorities slaughtered every bird in the territory - around one-and-a-half million of them.
Not ready
Compare that with the situation in Vietnam today.
The New York Times reported recently that while two years ago when a case of bird flu was discovered every chicken within a radius of about 5km of the infected fowl would be slaughtered, today officials kill only those birds in an infected flock that do not die from the disease itself.
The reason, the newspaper says, is a lack of money to compensate the farmers.
And then there are the allegations of corruption in Indonesia which mean the country has to test its entire stock of bird flu vaccine because government auditors suspect companies have produced doses of inferior quality to inflate profits.
Or fears raised by opposition politicians in South Korea that the government doesn't have enough intensive care facilities to treat a mass outbreak of any kind of communicable disease.
So yes, Asia has woken up to the threat posed by this disease.
But is it ready? No, there's a lot to do.
Although in some places they're doing their utmost to take adequate precautions, this region is nowhere near a position to fight an outbreak in anywhere but the most developed or affluent areas.
"We are hoping the resources now being discussed in the West will now make it possible to protect the populations of the poorest countries," says the WHO's Peter Cordingley, but he warns "It's a slow business, and how long do we have?"
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