The European Union should be able to dip into a 1 billion euro disaster fund to buy emergency vaccines and antiviral drugs if there were bird flu pandemic, the EU executive Commission said on Tuesday.

Some 51 people have died from the virus since it swept across Asia at the end of 2003.

Experts fear a pandemic could be unleashed if bird flu mutates so that it can spread among humans, rather than being transmitted from infected birds to humans as is currently the case.

EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou is proposing that EU states fighting a pandemic can use the EU’s 1 billion euro disaster fund to pay for drugs.

“This will enable the much-needed budgetary flexibility that is necessary to cope with major health emergencies,” he told the European Parliament. “This fund would have an annual volume of 1 billion euro and would explicitly cover costs of vaccines and antivirals.”

For the proposal to take effect, the 25 EU states and the European Parliament must agree to revising the rules of the solidarity fund, created to fund disaster relief and reconstruction after summer floods in Europe in 2002.

The proposal would boost EU governments’ efforts to stock up on vaccines and anti-virals, an EU official said.

The 25-nation bloc is trying to co-ordinate its negotiations with drug companies to buy vaccines so all countries can get access to medicine rather than big countries garnering the lion’s share.

Tens of millions of fowl have died of bird flu or been slaughtered in a so-far vain attempt to kill off the virus, which the World Health Organisation says is now endemic in parts of southeast Asia.