As the world prepares for the emergence of a pandemic strain of influenza, trans-national, national and local organisations and agencies are designing plans to manage community outbreaks. In addition, the medical commu-nity is identifying scientific research priorities and needs related to the anticipated pandemic [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] . There is also a need to examine the ethical issues that arise from planning for a public health crisis of this magnitude. Who should get the limited supply of antivirals? Are health care workers duty-bound to care for the ill in a pandemic when they may have competing familial obligations? Who will be prioritized for scarce ventilated hospital beds? When should hospitals cancel elective surgeries or restrict hospital visitation? To date, the bioethics community has been slow to respond to public health issues in general [6, 7] , and pandemic influenza planning in particular [8, 9] . In this paper we discuss the need for ethics in pandemic influenza planning and discuss the ethical framework we developed to guide pandemic planning in hospitals.