New swine flu resource online

A new interactive website providing accurate, bang-up-to-date information on swine flu to the general public launches today.

Scientists from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, working with colleagues at the Health Protection Agency and elsewhere in Europe have set up the site, which enables visitors to access information on transmission, symptoms and treatments, advice on controlling the spread of infection, and the latest statistics on the number of reported cases in the UK, Europe and worldwide.

They hope it will provide reassurance to the public, allow for more accurate surveillance of flu during the current pandemic, and take some pressure off health services, which are struggling to cope with an increasing number of calls from the public.

Current surveillance systems are based on people contacting their GP, and this information being passed on to Health Protection Agency. But there are problems with this system. Many people do not contact the health service when they are ill, or are discouraged from doing so, due to fears they may overwhelm services, making it difficult to accurately estimate the numbers of people affected by flu.

Those visiting the new website can also take part in the newly-launched UK Flu Survey, which aims to monitor influenza-like illness in the UK over the next four years. This is a voluntary, internet-based surveillance system enabling people to log on and report whether they are ill or not. The whole process only takes a few minutes and visitors will be able to immediately see the number of people in their area who are reporting illness, receive an approximate diagnosis, and access the most up-to-date advice about swine flu and how to seek help.

Richard White, Senior Lecturer in Infectious Disease Modelling at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and one of the scientists who has set up the site, comments: 'We hope that this system will give us a more accurate, up-to-date description of disease in the community, and keep people informed of pandemic progress in the most up-to-date and complete way possible. This method has been successfully used for a number of years now in Holland, Belgium, Portugal and Italy, and we hope that by collecting data in similar ways across different countries we can compare the epidemiology of flu very accurately'.

The data will be used for monitoring trends in flu - helping the NHS to respond appropriately to this, and future epidemics.

How to get involved:

Go to http://www.flusurvey.org.uk and follow the prompts.

You will be asked some background questions. Then, every week (or more often if you wish) you will be asked to log on and report if you have any symptoms or not. If you don't, this should just take a few seconds. If you do, you will be given advice on whether your symptoms are likely to be flu, and what to do if they are. You'll also be asked to fill in a quick questionnaire about your contacts with other people so we can get invaluable information about the risk of getting flu.