Richard White, Senior Lecturer in Infectious Disease Modelling at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and one of the scientists who has set up the site, comments: 'We hope that this system will give us a more accurate, up-to-date description of disease in the community, and keep people informed of pandemic progress in the most up-to-date and complete way possible. This method has been successfully used for a number of years now in Holland, Belgium, Portugal and Italy, and we hope that by collecting data in similar ways across different countries we can compare the epidemiology of flu very accurately'.

The data will be used for monitoring trends in flu - helping the NHS to respond appropriately to this, and future epidemics.

How to get involved:

Go to flusurvey and follow the prompts.

You will be asked some background questions. Then, every week (or more often if you wish) you will be asked to log on and report if you have any symptoms or not. If you don't, this should just take a few seconds. If you do, you will be given advice on whether your symptoms are likely to be flu, and what to do if they are. You'll also be asked to fill in a quick questionnaire about your contacts with other people so we can get invaluable information about the risk of getting flu.

flusurvey