In conjunction with the release of Betty O'Keefe and Ian Macdonald's Dr. Fred and the Spanish Lady: Fighting the Killer Flu (Heritage House, $18.95), Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell proclaimed Dr. Frederick Theodore Underhill Month to honour the physician who led Vancouver's defence against the ravages of the 1918 killer flu pandemic that arrived in Canada via soldiers returning home from Europe. The proclamation pays tribute to Underhill's public health innovations and leadership during the pandemic that claimed the lives of 700 of Vancouver's 110,000 people. In the United States, the Spanish flu or 'Spanish Lady' killed ten times more people than the number of Americans who died in World War One. With a foreword by Dr. John Blatherwick, chief medical health officer of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, Dr. Fred and the Spanish Lady confers long overdue hero status on the Vancouver-born doctor who was appointed Vancouver's first medical health officer 100 years ago.

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