News Releases

1918 Projects


21/08/2007

The Spanish Influenza of 1918 and its importance today

In the autumn of 1918, a bird flu called H1N1 swept the world, killing over 60 million people and infecting a billion. This threat from the past still haunts public health analysts and underpins the World Health Organisations Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Plan during the current threat from avian flu H5N1. Our own government has detailed plans to hand.

But where did bird flu H1N1 arise and how long was it incubating before exploding on the world? What is genetic RNA fingerprint of such a killer virus?

Our own research carried out with Professor Jo Martin, Sir Colin Berry, Professor Armine Sefton, Dr Rod Daniels and Dr Jeffrey Taubenberger and the historian Douglas Gill explores the birthplace of the virus in France in 1916 whilst even more effort is placed into locating lung samples from victims. We have eight (influenza positive lung) samples from the pathology collection at the Royal London Hospital.

From a lung sample of a patient who died in 1914, we now know the nature of the preceding pandemic to 1918, the so-called Russian flu of 1889. We have exhumed seven Norwegian coal miners from Svalbard who were buried in ice graves and more recently exhumed two influenza victims buried in lead coffins in England. This autumn we will exhume a third victim from 1919.