HEALTH officials in Bolton are continuing to plan for a possible outbreak of bird flu after a top specialist in the town said the disease was 'likely' to hit Britain.

Graham Munslow, a public health specialist for Boltons Primary Care Trust, said the odds on bird flu affecting Britons were high because the country was on bird migration flight paths.

And he said stock-piles of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu were still being collected.

In Bolton, 70,000 people - a quarter of the population - could now be treated in an outbreak.

Mr Munslow spoke out as more cases of the avian flu were diagnosed in Turkey - the first country to have an outbreak outside Asia. But he said when bird flu does reach Britain, it was unlikely it would be the pandemic experts first predicted.

He said: "Countries which are on the flight path of migrating birds are likely to have cases of the avian flu and we are on the flight path for birds so it is conceivable that there will be cases in this country, but it won't be a pandemic. Bird flu certainly hasnt spread like wildfire and we are better prepared than any of the countries so far affected."

Confirmed cases of the deadly H5N1 strain in three people living near Turkey's capital Ankara prompted a European Union ban on imports to be widened. An EU spokesman said there was still no evidence that the virus had been transmitted from human to human.