Kathmandu, Jan. 20 -- When a 21-year-old man from Kavre died of flu-like disease in a Capital hospital last March, it took health authorities two and a half months to confirm that the patient had died of bird flu.

It was the first case of H5N1 infection since February 2017, and the incident had exposed the country's lack of preparedness to monitor and combat infectious diseases.

The Epidemiology and Disease Control Division (EDCD) had formed a rapid response team only after the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center for Influenza in Japan, confirmed the presence of Influenza H5N1 virus.

"A lot of people would have contracted bird flu or died of it if the virus could transmit from one human to another," Dr Baburam Marasini, a ...