A letter to Dr Bloomfield, from 1918
History
June 7, 2023
Header Image: A medicine depot in Christchurch during the 1918 Flu Pandemic
An imagined letter from Dr Joseph Frengley, 1918 acting head of the Department of Public Health, Hospitals and Charitable Institutions, to our Director-General of Health, compares pandemic responses from very different times. Lessons learned from the 1918 influenza pandemic still form the bedrock of our current COVID-19 Pandemic Plan. What would health professionals a hundred years from now say to Dr Ashley Bloomfield about our COVID-19 pandemic response?
Read the ‘letter’ from Dr Frengley to Dr Ashley Bloomfield, written by health historian Warwick Brunton.
Find out more about the 1918 Influenza Pandemic
