Your questions about bird flu

How long is an influenza pandemic likely to last?

This depends partly on the virulence of the strain of flu causing a pandemic, something that cannot be known until the strain of flu that causes the global outbreak develops.

The Ministry of Health is working on the assumption that each wave of a severe pandemic may last for eight weeks.

Past experience can be only a rough guide.

Last century's worst flu pandemic, the 1918-19 Spanish flu, estimated to have killed more than 40 million people worldwide, occurred in three waves. The first was in June-July 1918. It caused illness that appeared the same as seasonal influenza.

In October and November 1918 a far more virulent illness appeared.

The pandemic's worst period lasted about three weeks in New Zealand. By December the worst of the disaster was over, but a third wave hit in 1919, although it was much smaller and less intensive.

The 1957-58 Asian flu pandemic affected New Zealand in one long wave of about three months' duration. The estimated global death toll was two million people.

The 1968-69 Hong Kong flu pandemic was similarly milder than 1918, causing around one million deaths worldwide.

Are there any special precautions that could be taken to protect babies?

Babies should be kept away from sick people, flu pandemic or not.

The Ministry of Health advises that families caring for babies should ensure their emergency supplies contain everything needed to look after a baby for at least a week.

No one can know yet whether a future flu pandemic will disproportionately affect particular groups in the community.

But children in countries where people have been infected with H5N1 bird flu - the virus that many experts fear could mutate to spread easily between humans and cause a pandemic - appear to be at greater risk. This may be from playing with infected birds or in areas contaminated with their droppings.