epidemic response Quotes

We want combination solutions at the state level, at the local level - whether we've learned from the Chinese about creating what we've been calling COVID wards - creating the ability to actually care for larger numbers of clients and patients in a more concentrated way which allows more oversights so we could really track patients.

When some states introduced mandatory smallpox vaccinations during the epidemic of 1898-1903, Americans resisted by the thousands. The ensuing battles produced medical conventions and case law that altered the balance between government authority and medical practice, in favor of federal control.

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic first appeared, a lot of the reaction was that it's not happening here. It doesn't exist. It's not on the continent of Africa. Then we moved into this other phase, in which it was kind of like, it's everywhere.

Soon after joining the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia, I was called upon as part of team to respond to a malaria outbreak. My team was dispatched to a village in southwestern Ethiopia, where I not only observed the malaria epidemic's shocking effects on adults and children but also experienced it first-hand.

This outbreak is moving ahead of efforts to control it.

The border patrol gave us a list of the diseases that they're concerned about, and Ebola was one of those.

In the ongoing effort to combat Ebola, more needs to be done to rewrite the public-health narrative. It must move from one that has been infused with fear to one that recognizes the hope for survival that supportive care can offer infected people.

The pulse of the People is still so high as to call for more bleeding, before quinine can be administered with any hope of benefit.

Since the first large Zika outbreak ever recognized, in 2007, the CDC has had boots on the ground responding. Our laboratories have developed a test that can confirm Zika in the first week of illness or in a sample from an affected child.

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.

We need a malaria epidemic in the blogging community! Either that or we need people who have seen the malaria epidemic to start blogging.

We cannot think of the old days when we were dealing with SARS. It's a totally different ballgame now.

When there were cases of Ebola in the States, I respected that people wanted to address concerns and take some sort of action, but the focus turned completely to the U.S. At one point, we started to wonder, Where is the Ebola epidemic happening? The States - or West Africa?

The Ebola epidemic can serve as an early warning wake-up call to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic.

Well the Global Fund, because of how well it's worked on not only AIDS, but also malaria and tuberculosis, I'd say it's well accepted. I mean, it's not politically controversial that this is a great humanitarian effort. But budgets are very very tight.

It's understandable that when something new comes out that's unfamiliar, scary, and has severe outcomes, it gets a lot of media attention. In fact, the Zika outbreak is unprecedented. We've never before identified a mosquito-borne infection that can cause fetal malformations.

Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s, so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this.

Occasionally they came to villages, and at each village they encountered a roadblock of fallen trees. Having had centuries of experience with the smallpox virus, the village elders had instituted their own methods for controlling the virus, according to their received wisdom, which was to cut their villages off from the world, to protect their people from a raging plague. It was reverse quarantine, an ancient practice in Africa, where a village bars itself from strangers during a time of disease, and drives away outsiders who appear. (94)

It’s useful to compare our preparations for epidemics with our preparations for war.

The history books will remember the Chinese doctors who sounded the alarm about COVID-19.

Strong health and disease surveillance systems halt epidemics that take lives, disrupt economies, and pose global health security threats.

We can't be playing around with these issues [Zika disease], because this can become very serious very quickly, as we have seen in Brazil and other countries. The funds are going to be used at the state level, but it is important for the federal government to cooperate in the federal government's role.

Nations don't have friends; they have interests. The best motivation for a state to act if it is remote from an epidemic is if its own security is at risk.

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.

The AIDS disease is caused by a virus, but the AIDS epidemic is not. The AIDS epidemic is fueled by stigma, by hate, by misinformation, by ignorance, by indifference. Science has accomplished miracles over the past 20 years, and science can now end this disease - but it cannot end the epidemic. We need more than medicine. We can do something about these things. We need to speak out about the changes we need to make in our society.