Epidemiology of Influenza in Australia and Papua New Guinea

The history of influenza in Australia closely parallels the history of the disease in the Northern Hemisphere, and its strange disappearance during the last century appears to have been world-wide. Individual outbreaks may affect different States with varying severity, and since 1944 the mortality rates from influenza have been significantly lower than before the war. The age distribution of mortality rates shows that the very young and the very old have been the most severely affected (except in 1919), but in recent years the tendency for more males than females to die has been less apparent.