The 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

ABSTRACT

Paul Selleck has been at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory, now the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, since 1983. In this time, he was head of the Avian Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, incorporating the National, OIE and FAO Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza and Newcastle Disease and an OIE Reference Expert for Avian Influenza and Newcastle Disease. He was also involved in the Australian equine and swine influenza outbreaks in 2007 and 2009 respectively and has worked with Hendra, Nipah and SARS at physical containment level 4. Paul now works extensively in Asia, running training courses on biosafety and biosecurity and laboratory diagnosis. He also audits laboratories and runs training courses on quality systems and ISO laboratory accreditation. Towards the end of world war one, the world faced a pandemic, caused not by smallpox or bubonic plague, but by an influenza A virus. The 1918-19 influenza pandemic was possibly the worst single natural disaster of all time, infecting an estimated 500 million people, or one third of the world population and killing between 20 and 100 million people in just over one year. The impact of the virus may have influenced the outcome of the first world war and killed more people than the war itself. The pandemic resulted in global economic disruption. It was a stimulus to establishment of local vaccine production in Australia. Those cities that removed public health restrictions too early experienced a second wave of infections. Unfortunately, it seems that the lessons of infection control and epidemic preparedness must be relearnt in every generation and for each new epidemic.