HSE publishes updated pandemic flu guide

The guidance can be downloaded from the HSE's website - see link above/right. It covers issues such as employees that come into contact with members of the public and the wearing of surgical masks.

Concerns over a possible global influenza pandemic have been heightened by the spread of the H5N1 avian influenza virus across various parts of the world.

Although there have been no known cases of human to human spread of the disease, it can be passed from bird to human, and many experts fear that the virus could mutate into a form that could be easily passed from one person to another.

Others have claimed that an influenza pandemic, regardless of its source, similar in scale to the 'Spanish flu' of 1918 and 1919 which killed 20 to 40 million people worldwide, is long overdue. The last, the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69, was responsible for a global death toll of between one and four million lives.