Seth Berkley Quotes

Too often, U.N. peacekeepers face an impossible task in countries that are still at war and where there is no real peace to keep.

The fact that you had disruptions in the peace process was not only in Rwanda. We had the same problem in Cambodia, we had the same problem in Mozambique, we had the same problem in Salvador.

I consider myself incredibly lucky to live and work in places like Canada and the U.S. where polio no longer threatens to rob the livelihoods of innocent children. As a young woman, I stand behind the women around the globe who are leading the charge against polio and working relentlessly to achieve a polio-free world.

I wanted to continue doing my work, but I had to figure out how. And so what I have basically come up with is that I still go to Afghanistan and Iraq and South Sudan and many of these places that are rife with war, but I don't go directly to the front line.

Most people, when they meet me, one of the first things they say is, 'Why would you voluntarily subject yourself to war? Why would you go into these places where you know there's a risk of getting killed?'

In Jamaica, we eradicated polio many years ago, but there are a lot of kids suffering in Africa still.

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

I think that protecting children at the age where they're most vulnerable against diseases that are highly contagious is prudent.

Keeping children alive and free of disease is not a political issue and cannot be put into a partisan box.

I experienced how foreign aid for large-scale vaccination projects helps to save the life of children and thus give a real input to growth and to escaping poverty.

Before journalism, I had worked doing medical aid work in conflict zones. Then, as a journalist, I had written about hospitals in war zones.

In large part, thanks to widespread immunization, the number of young children dying each year has declined significantly, from approximately 14 million in 1979 to slightly less than eight million in 2010.

Police do not belong in war zones.

The doctors and nurses at the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital are saving lives every day and helping improve health care in the DRC which has been ravaged by more than a decade of war and disease.

Here we will solve with laws and dollars, problems that too many people around the world still must solve with violence and civil war.

While conflicts have expanded and deepened and transformed, actors have transformed, and humanitarian assistance is transforming. Protection work is transforming and taking on another character.

Vaccination and other essential preventive services must be delivered close within communities.

I wish to pay attention to what we can do better to prevent conflict. Because by avoiding conflict, we save human lives, and we also save money.

In countries where there are real civil wars, people go through a lot, and we should be willing to go through a lot to help them.

Conflicts do not respect borders.

When I was growing up, my dad was away a lot. He did a lot of work in crisis zones, places like Uganda or Rwanda.

It's now evident that public health is part of national security.

Humanitarian assistance, once conceived as a short-term relief effort, is increasingly the only substitute for long-term development work in protracted armed conflicts.

During World Immunization Week, we must celebrate our shared results and redouble our efforts to improve the health and lives of people everywhere.

I've lived and worked in Brussels and New York at the U.N. and worked all over the world. I would jump on a plane and be in Kabul one week and then Dafur the next.