Top Tayside public health specialist Dr Julie Cavanagh told members of the full board of NHS Tayside, meeting in King’s Cross Hospital today, that a pandemic would have a massive impact on the workforce, and therefore the work capability, of not only the health service but of other emergency services and all the utilities.

There has not been a worldwide flu outbreak for nearly 40 years and Dr Cavanagh said the massive changes in lifestyle, including greater and faster movement throughout the world by air travel, would affect the spread of the infection.

She said a great amount of research had gone into pandemic influenza, both nationally and internationally.

“A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic and when it comes it will most likely be caused by an emerging new strain of an influenza virus,” said Dr Cavanagh.

She said there would be “a lag time” between the new strain being identified and the manufacture of a vaccine.

There were a number of areas of uncertainty, not least of which was when a pandemic might occur and, if as seemed most likely, it occurs elsewhere in the world first, when would it actually arrive in the UK.

Dr Cavanagh said all those planning for a pandemic knew it was not simply an NHS issue but “a population issue”, with vast numbers of people providing all kinds of services likely to be affected.

“The worst case scenario will challenge us significantly,” said Dr Cavanagh.

“I think the likely impact is we would not be able to continue to offer full services as usual. We would be able to offer something far different to that. All business continuity planning is about that.”

Dr Bob Rosbottom, a member of the board, and a general practitioner in Dundee, said he was concerned the public might ignore the very necessary messages that would be put out in the event of a pandemic because they had become immune to media “scare stories”.

But the doctor was very sure a pandemic would have a radical effect on his work and that of his colleagues.

“I won’t be monitoring blood pressure or checking cholesterol,” he said. “I will be working twice as hard but working twice as hard on influenza. And I won’t be doing any paperwork.”

When Dr Cavanagh was asked what kind of changes could be made to prevent the further spread of flu when it arrived, she suggested one of the first things that would be cancelled would be the sort of gathering of NHS officials for business meetings such as the one she was addressing today.

“It spreads the same way as any flu,” said Dr Cavanagh. “Pandemic flu won’t be any different. It will spread mainly through the air. It spreads from person to person by ordinary social contact, for example a board meeting like this.

NHS Tayside chief executive Professor Tony Wells said there had been some media comment about the NHS looking after its own, giving the first available vaccines to health workers.

Defending such action, Professor Wells said, “The reality is they are the staff who will have to look after the people affected.”

“It’s almost 40 years since we had a pandemic. It is likely it will happen again, it may not be soon but it will happen sometime. We can look to history to give us pointers.”