In October 1918, a 3-year-old boy and his two 6-month-old and 2-year-old cousins, born in a small fishing village at the south of the island of Euboea in Greece, managed to survive the Spanish flu outbreak, despite their whole families wiped out due to influenza.

 

According to the locals: “…when the babies lost their parents, they were left in an old stone-made house, outside the village. Nobody from the village was visiting them, because they thought that their parents had died because of tuberculosis. Nobody, except for an old woman, who had no fear and every morning she was offering to them milk from her goat. This is how they managed to survive…”

One hundred years after this story, one of many similar recorded stories describing the worldwide devastating effects of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, a specialized scientific institution dedicated on paediatric viral infections was founded. The institute, which was named “Institute of Paediatric Virology”, was based on the island of Euboea, in the memorandum of these three children, who managed to survive the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak.