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As the world battles the coronavirus pandemic, Professor John Oxford, one of the world’s leading virologists, examines how the last truly global pandemic affected every corner of the world.

It’s estimated between 50 and 100 million people died in three outbreaks of the so-called ‘Spanish Flu’ which hit in 1918 and 1919. It remains the most devastating pandemic in modern history and to this day, scientists are still trying to pinpoint its origins.

More people died than perished in World War One and Two combined. It even killed more than the bubonic plague, yet in many parts of the world it is virtually forgotten. But now the story of 1918/19 pandemic is more relevant than ever!

We hear how otherwise healthy soldiers returning safely from war would be dead within three or four days, how whole families would be wiped out in a week and how the authorities in different parts of the world struggled to cope with looking after the sick and burying their dead on such a huge scale.

The deadly flu was different but yet similar to the coronavirus in the way it affected the respiratory system. People would turn blue or purple and often succumb to pneumonia in a time before the discovery of antibiotics. Many nurses and doctors became part of the death toll.

John looks through the archives and traces its emergence and spread through every continent. We hear real and dramatized testimony from people who lived through it in countries like South Africa, Britain, France, Germany, America and New Zealand.

He presents his own hypothesis, gleaned from years of work in the area on where it may have begun and brings things up to date with his verdict on what lessons we can learn from history as we continue to fight the first truly global pandemic in 100 years.
Producer: Ashley Byrne

(Photo: Nurses care for victims of an influenza epidemic outdoors amidst canvas tents during an outdoor fresh air cure in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1918. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)