Black Dawn: The Next Pandemic

This docudrama film was produced and broadcast (January 11 2006) by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). It is distributed in the United States by Fanlight Productions (in other countries, contact the CBC.) The programme intends to illustrate the impact of an avian flu pandemic on a modern industrial/urban society. It uses the scenario of the possibility of human-to-human transmission of the virus, leading to the worldwide spread of avian influenza. Its producers have attempted to create a fictional scenario grounded in scientific fact and including recent research and thought on pandemic preparedness efforts of epidemiologists, doctors, and emergency planners, who describe the impact avian flu would have as it spreads around the globe. The drama's time line and other script elements are based on the research, predictions, and assumptions used by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Public Health Agency of Canada, the United States (US) Department of Health and Human Services and the United Kingdom's (UK's) Health Protection Agency to prepare pandemic plans.

The 52-minute film is supported by freely available online study materials and a fictional personal chronicle presented as a blog, The Next Pandemic Blog, of a nurse working in a Toronto hospital when the crisis strikes. The online materials are hosted at the CBC news "Fifth Estate" website and include:

• "Answers to Your Questions" on pandemic preparation and history, H5N1 virus, the potential role of the CBC and government and international agencies.
• Expert interviews with epidemiology, public health, and emergency planning experts.
• An article on the pandemic virus of 1918.
• WHO's "Number of Confirmed Human Cases of Avian Influenza" website.