Margaret Chan Quotes

The way Zika spreads is primarily through the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in places that don't have screens and air-conditioning.

Know that the tiger mosquito - Aedes albopictus - sometimes spreads viruses that spread like Zika, so it may be able to spread Zika.

If a healthy person were placed on the other side of a room from a person who was sick with AIDS, the AIDS virus would not be able to drift across the room through the air and infect the healthy person.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

It’s not the mosquitoes who spread the disease [Zika]. Mosquitoes don’t travel more than 500 yards from where they are born. It’s the people. They travel.

With over 20 million residents and 100 million tourists, we must stay ahead of the possible spread of the Zika virus and take immediate action to ensure Florida is prepared.

Zika has arrived on our shores, and the number of local infections is continuing to grow. Thankfully, companies like SpringStar are doing incredible work developing innovative tools to stop the spread of Zika. It's more important than ever that Congress provide the resources to deploy these technologies to the communities who need them.

I don't want to be in the clubhouse, if I have the coronavirus or something like that, coming into the clubhouse and spread to everybody, that's not good, right?

We have seen how Zika has become a very serious problem in Brazil, in other parts of Latin America, in this hemisphere. During the summer it can arrive very quickly here in south Florida, in the whole state. In a very hot climate in summer, where mosquitos begin to spread very quickly, it's a very serious threat.

The musquetos continue to infest us in such manner that we can scarcely exist. My dog even howls with the torture he experiences.

We got a malaria initiative, really a phenomenal time, even though in the early stages there was some uncertainty. Then of course [Barack] Obama, although he had budget constraints, he believed in these things; a lot of new initiatives, including in agriculture.

we have to suffer mosquitoes the size of blackbirds.

Remember what I said about the mosquitoes?" "Which part" asked Maggie. "The scary part, the really scary part, the legitimately terrifying part, or the part that makes suicide sound like an awesome way to spend the evening?

People don’t take it [the Zika Virus] seriously…. They haven’t seen any babies with microcephaly, YET!

People traveling to malaria-prone areas can protect themselves by taking steps such as taking antimalarial drugs, using insect repellent, sleeping under insecticide-treated bed-nets, and wearing protective clothing.

There's clearly things you can do in your environment to try to prevent disease, and I want to know what those things are.

Controlling mosquitos is tough. It's not quick; it's not easy. It requires work day in and day out to track where mosquitos are and to apply safely the appropriate mosquito control methods.

Zika is spread by mosquitos. They are tough to control. It will bite four or five people at one blood meal. They can breed in the amount of water it takes to fill up a bottle cap or, theoretically, even a drop of water. You have to get rid of maybe 90% of them or more before you protect people.

We know Zika's not going to go on vacation.

Pregnant women who are in places where Zika is spreading should do everything they can to avoid mosquito bites. And we, as a society, need to do everything we can to control Zika. That means learning more about it; that means controlling mosquitoes more effectively. That means achieving a vaccine.

The bottom line is, if you're pregnant, don't travel to an area where Zika is spreading.

Mosquito control in the United States is very much a local and state activity. Some states have excellent programs, other states not so much. It's one of the reasons it's so urgent to identify and spread best practices to try and track and reduce mosquito populations.

Over and over, nature shows that it's a really tough adversary. That's why it's important that we invest in laboratories, disease detectives, research, mosquito control, the public health system around the world to find, stop, track, prevent health threats.

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.

I am not opposed to scientists looking at all ways to combat and destroy the Zika virus.