Living with Enza

'Never since the Black Death has such a plague swept over the face of the world,' commented the Times, '[and] never, perhaps, has a plague been more stoically accepted.' Between the summer of 1918 and the spring of 1919 a deadly strain of influenza claimed the lives of 228,000 Britons. Worldwide the death toll from the Great Flu was simply incomprehensible with as many as 100 million dead, according to some estimates. As one doctor's son from Lancashire recalled, 'People collapsed in their homes, in the streets and at work...All treatment was futile.' Yet for all that this 'plague' decimated cities and communities across Britain, the pandemic hardly warrants a mention in the biographies and autobiographies of prominent people who lived through the outbreaks. Based on unpublished testimonies from flu survivors and the memoirs of doctors, soldiers and civil servants, this is the fascinating true story of Britain's 'forgotten' pandemic and the continuing scientific effort to unravel the secrets of the virus. For though the Great Flu has receded from public memory the threat of pandemic influenza has not gone away. Perhaps the next pandemic will come in 2012, or perhaps it will come sooner. Perhaps it will start in China, as several experts have been predicting for some years now, or perhaps the seat of the next outbreak will be Bangladesh. Whatever the case, we need to be ready. A new pandemic is a question of 'when, not if,' says Britain's Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson. 'We can't make this pandemic go away, because it's a natural phenomenon, it will come.'