As highlighted through the interviews, our students believed in the classic picture of morbidity attributable to the flu, such that only the very young, the elderly, those with co-morbidities and those with weakened immunity are at risk. This result is consistent with the risk groups identified by participants in previous studies [4] . Given this low level of anxiety towards the pandemic, it is perhaps not surprising that the students did not undertake any behavioural changes in response to the H1N1 pandemic, as highlighted here and in our previous study [10] .