Margaret Chan Quotes

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Margaret Chan

Profession : Public Servant

Birth : August 21, 1947

HIV AIDS is a disease with stigma. And we have learned with experience, not just with HIV AIDS but with other diseases, countries for many reasons are sometimes hesitant to admit they have a problem.

Margaret Chan

Tobacco is the only industry that produces products to make huge profits and at the same time damage the health and kill their consumers.

Margaret Chan

New diseases like SARS and bird flu cause anxiety in the community. People get worried, some to the extent that it even affects their health. You feel very sad, and yet you must carry on and maintain your cool in very trying and difficult moments. You have to tough it out.

Margaret Chan

The International Health Partnership Plus is addressing the need to harmonize development assistance and reduce the current waste, duplication, and high transaction costs.

Margaret Chan

For the first time in history we can track the evolution of a pandemic in real time. Influenza viruses are notorious for their rapid mutation and unpredictable behaviour.

Margaret Chan

All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans. Countries should remain on high alert for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia.

Margaret Chan

If the country has invested in the training of doctors or nurses or midwives for that matter, people are beginning to say, 'Should we not ask them to serve a number of years in the country who invested in their training?' I think this is now coming to be an interesting discussion.

Margaret Chan

Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. This will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry. A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill.

Margaret Chan

Many diseases including malaria, dengue, meningitis - just a few examples - these are what we call climate-sensitive diseases, because such climate dimensions for rainfall, humidity and temperature would influence the epidemics, the outbreaks, either directly influencing the parasites or the mosquitoes that carry them.

Margaret Chan

I think U.N. organizations are important organizations. They exist for good reasons. And we also admit that there is room for us to improve the way we do business. The WHO will be a very positive and proactive partner in the overall U.N. reform, which is also important.

Margaret Chan

This change to a higher phase of alert is a signal to governments, to ministries of health and other ministries, to the pharmaceutical industry and the business community that certain actions now should be undertaken with increased urgency and at an accelerated pace.

Margaret Chan

After all it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.

Margaret Chan

The international community should treat this as a window of opportunity to ramp up preparedness and response.

Margaret Chan

Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously, precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world.

Margaret Chan

Based on assessment of all available information and following several expert consultations, I have decided to raise the current level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 4 to phase 5.

Margaret Chan

Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise in Europe and elsewhere in the world. We are losing our first-line antimicrobials. Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in intensive care units.

Margaret Chan

A health system that lacks commodities for managing high-mortality infectious diseases and the main killers of mothers and young children will not have an adequate impact. By the same token, even the best-stocked delivery system will have an inadequate impact if it fails to reach the poor.

Margaret Chan

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and the related Accra Agenda for Action, are useful policy instruments that set out the mutual responsibilities of donors and recipient countries.

Margaret Chan

WHO has a country office in nearly every developing country, usually located close to the Ministry of Health. Staff in these offices need to do much more to help ministries of health strengthen their national health plans and strategies and then negotiate with development partners to support these priorities and follow these plans.

Margaret Chan

What amazes me most is that the media and I have fostered a close relationship.

Margaret Chan