London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

An interactive flu surveillance website, which allows members of the public to log influenza-like symptoms and find out the latest news and statistics about flu, relaunches today in time for Winter 2010.

Scientists from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine set up the UK Flu Survey, an interactive website for monitoring influenza-like illness in the UK, to track last year's swine flu pandemic. During the 2009 pandemic, the flusurvey collected essential information in turbulent times.

Professor John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)comments: "We really do not know what will happen with flu this year: whether swine flu will return, or a different strain will circulate; whether it will be a big flu season or not. It is anybody's guess. That's why we want people to help us monitor what happens."

This year, for the first time, identical flu surveys will be run in six European countries. Ellen Brooks-Pollock, a Research Fellow in Mathematical Modelling at LSHTM adds: "This is the first time we will be able to directly compare patterns of flu in the UK with Italy, Belgium, Holland, Sweden or Portugal. Up until now this has been impossible because of the very different surveillance and healthcare systems in each country".

The flusurvey is a voluntary, internet-based surveillance system enabling people to log on each week and report whether they are ill or not. Visitors to the site can see the number of people in their area who are reporting illness, receive an approximate diagnosis based on the symptoms they report, and access the most up-to-date news and advice about flu.

Members of the public are invited to register with the site if they would like to take part. Participation only takes a few minutes and the data collected will be invaluable in helping to monitor flu in the UK, predicting the likely spread of disease, and determining the impact of influenza-like illness on the UK's health systems.

Ken Eames, a Lecturer in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at LSHTM concludes: "Everyone's familiar with flu, but it's surprisingly hard to know how many cases of it there are at any one time. Last year, thanks to flusurvey users, we were able to fill in some of the gaps; we're hoping to do even better this season."

The UK Flu Survey can be found at www.flusurvey.org.uk.