id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cord-336142-jmetfa6x	MacDougall, Heather	Toronto’s Health Department in Action: Influenza in 1918 and SARS in 2003	2006-10-11		.txt	text/plain	10366	520	55	This article compares the Toronto Health Department's role in controlling the 1918 influenza epidemic with its activities during the SARS outbreak in 2003 and concludes that local health departments are the foundation for successful disease containment, provided that there is effective coordination, communication, and capacity. 3 By comparing and contrasting the way in which public health authorities in Toronto managed the 1918 influenza pandemic and SARS in 2003, we can see how a century of medical advances had conditioned the public and health care professionals to expect prompt control of communicable diseases, speedy development of a prophylactic vaccine, and effective exchange of information at the provincial, national, and international levels. For Toronto's medical officer and its Local Board of Health (LBH), this presented a challenge, because influenza was not a reportable disease under the 1912 Ontario Public Health Act, and most doctors were hoping that the outbreak would be similar to the one in 1889-90 that had attacked primarily the elderly and apparently provided some immunity to those who survived.	./cache/cord-336142-jmetfa6x.txt	./txt/cord-336142-jmetfa6x.txt