Margaret Chan Quotes

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.

More than 50 million people around the world died during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. That's why we have epidemiologists all over the world tracking whether new strains of flu emerge.

The Ebola epidemic was the most frightening outbreak I have witnessed in my lifetime, and I believe it was necessary to react globally as strongly as we did.

I've had to confront a lot of pandemics and infectious diseases around the globe.

Pandemic influenza is by nature an international issue; it requires an international solution.

We have seen SARS stopped dead in its tracks.

While Ebola's deadly reach has proven to be a complex and unique international challenge, the many uncertainties surrounding this virus continue to threaten U.S. national security.

Without effective human intervention, epidemics and pandemics typically end only when the virus or bacteria has infected every available host and all have either died or become immune to the disease.

When there is an influenza threat, drop everything and focus on risks from influenza pandemics. When SARS spreads, focus on unknown respiratory diseases. This approach helps to quell public concern, but it's a hugely inefficient way to deal with future risks.

The reality is: By the time swine flu got on the radar screen of global public health, it had already spread. It was already in the States, it was in Mexico, it was in New Zealand. By the time it reaches that point, you've lost the ability to contain it.

If we can provide even a few months of early warning for just one pandemic, the benefits will outweigh all the time and energy we're devoting. Imagine preventing health crises, not just responding to them.

There is a cost for investing in pandemic preparedness, but a much bigger cost for not investing in it.

We’re in a globalized world and the risk [of epidemics] is shared..

I'm tired of being behind this virus. We've been behind this virus from day one. We underestimated this virus. It's more powerful, it's more dangerous than we expected.

Yellow fever outbreaks are not uncommon. But, as with other infectious diseases, when they occur in urban areas, they can play out very differently - not least in terms of the speed and scale at which they can spread.

We know how to stop Ebola: by isolating and treating patients, tracing and monitoring their contacts, and breaking the chains of transmission.

As demonstrated by the emergence of the Mexican swine flu in the U.S., infectious diseases have little respect for borders; helping developing countries detect and deal with their diseases is the surest way for us to protect ourselves from new and potentially devastating epidemics.

We prioritize protecting the people's daily lives and jobs by continuing to make every effort to prevent coronavirus infections.

It's essential that we have a coordinated, well-resourced government response to the coronavirus to keep Kansas communities safe.

From West Nile to swine flu to Ebola to the global outbreak of dengue fever, the capacity to deal with threats like Zika must be designed into our preparedness posture.

Then there is my country, the Philippines. President Rodrigo Duterte placed most of the country under a lockdown on the ides of March. Surrounded by men in uniform, he cut public transportation and talked about home quarantine, checkpoints and curfews, but said little about the virus or economic aid for those in need.

If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.

If you find diseases before they've really emerged, you can control them early on, before you get a major epidemic.

As a species, I think we have no choice but to try and forecast pandemics.

We live in a world fraught with risk from new pandemics. Fortunately, we also now live in an era with the tools to build a global immune system.