GENEVA (AFP) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) said that it had alerted the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche in case it needed to call on a stockpile of the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu to fight a new bird flu outbreak in Indonesia.

At the beginning of last week the situation looked like we needed to activate our containment protocol", a set of steps to fight a feared pandemic sparked by bird flu, WHO spokesman Dick Thompson told AFP.

As a result, Thompson said, WHO officials called Roche to ask the company to stand by to fly doses of Tamiflu to Indonesia.

However, the UN health agency is unlikely to have to draw on the stockpile because fears have been subsiding over recent days, he said.

Roche has donated more than three million treatments of Tamiflu to the WHO´s stockpile, and stores the drug on behalf of the agency.

It is the first time that the company has been placed on alert by the WHO, although Thompson noted that the move was largely precautionary.

Tamiflu, an antiviral which is largely used to fight seasonal influenza, is seen as a key component of WHO-led efforts to halt or slow down a potential pandemic.

"The way most people think about it is that you would ring an area, quarantine it and then give Tamiflu and that way snuff out the first embers of a pandemic", said Thompson.

Last week, fears of possible human-to-human transmission of avian influenza -- which experts say would be the first sign of a pandemic -- were heightened after it was confirmed that seven members of the same family died in Indonesia earlier this month from the virus.

WHO experts later said there may have been limited human-to-human transmission but insisted the virus had not mutated into a more easily transmissible form.

"If we see a cluster of human cases, with five cases or more, then we´re required to start thinking about launching a containment effort", said Thompson.

"Very shortly after that we realised that the outbreak was contained to a single family and didn´t spread to other people who certainly were exposed. We realised that we didn´t need this stockpile", he said.

"However, we haven´t called Roche yet to tell them to stand down from this because according to our guidelines we have to wait two incubation periods to make sure the situation is under control."

Thompson said some 30 people quarantined after coming into contact with the stricken family had been asked to remain in isolation for another two weeks.

More than 120 people have died of bird flu around the world since late 2003, the vast majority of them in Asia.

Indonesia has had more bird flu deaths than any other country this year.