In the spirit of bestsellers such as Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Coming Plague, and The Ghost Map, Dr. Bonnie Henry provides an eye-opening account of what ails us.

As a physician who has spent the better part of the last two decades chasing bugs all over the world -- from Ebola in Uganda, to polio in Pakistan, to SARS in Toronto, to the H1N1 influenza outbreak in Mexico -- Dr. Bonnie Henry, a leading epidemiologist (virus hunter) and public-health doctor, offers three simple rules to live by: clean your hands, cover your mouth when you cough, and stay at home when you have a fever. It all boils down to basic hygiene.

DR. BONNIE HENRY is a public health physician, a preventative medicine specialist, and an epidemiologist currently serving as the provincial health officer for British Columbia. Previously, she was the director of Public Health Emergency Management at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control and an associate medical officer at Toronto Public Health, where she was operational lead in the response to the SARS outbreak. She was also a consultant to the WHO during the 2001 Ebola outbreak in Uganda and on the STOP Polio eradication program in Pakistan, and she helped coordinate the response to the 2009 North American H1N1 pandemic. Dr. Henry is board-certified by the American College of Preventive Medicine, and she graduated from Dalhousie Medical School and completed a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of California, San Diego.

Bonnie Henry's profile page

With its impressive combination of meticulous research and excellent writing, this is an invaluable handbook for anyone trying to stay healthy in a germ-infested universe.

Winnipeg Free Press