Global Health Security Quotes

When [disease] can't be stopped, that's where we become lost.

As megacities like Mexico City and Lagos become increasingly common, we could see a rise of the urban epidemic and a new era of infectious disease threatening global health security.

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.

New, unfamiliar, and mysterious threats to our health are scary. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - where we identify, on average, one new health threat each year - we work around the clock with an approach that prioritizes finding out what we need to know as fast as we can to protect Americans.

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

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.

The first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States has caused some to call on the United States to ban travel for anyone from the countries in West Africa facing the worst of the Ebola epidemic. That response is understandable. It's only human to want to protect ourselves and our families.

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

China and other members should join efforts to combat serious infectious disease, such as bird flu. To enhance the cooperation on the prevention of bird flu is an important target of the organization, which includes Russia, China and four Central Asian states.

I'm really an alarmist when it comes to epidemics. Swine flu now; when SARS was big, I was all freaked out about that, bird flu. That terrifies me.

Pandemics do not occur randomly. From malaria and influenza to AIDS and SARS, the lethal microbes have come, in the first instance, from animals, especially wild animals. And we increasingly know which parts of the world pose the greatest risk for future incursions.

With nuclear weapons, you'd think you would probably stop after killing 100million. Smallpox won't stop. Because the population is naïve, and there are no real preparations. That, if it got out and spread, would be a larger number.

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

To be able to detect the outbreak of avian flu anywhere in the world is going to require a partnership of several countries that will share information and samples, but it is important to remember a threat anywhere is a threat everywhere.

Tom Cotton voted against preparing America for pandemics like Ebola.

What hard evidence is there that Obama doesn't want ebola in America?

Congress did the right thing with Ebola. They funded us to protect Americans and keep us safer.

Strong leadership is essential in the face of health crises. Complex public health emergencies demand a collective response with high-level political and diplomatic engagement at both the national and global levels.

Because pandemics almost always begin with the transmission of an animal microbe to a human, it's work that takes me all around the globe - from rain forest hunting camps of central Africa to wild animal markets of east Asia.

Today, we take the risk of nuclear war quite seriously, climate change not so much and epidemics least of all. But no single country, not even the United States, is well prepared. And even if one country is doing the right things to protect itself, it has to be a global thing.

The United States and WHO [World Health Organization] have no clear protocols for DURC, no standards for determining safety, and no plans for a coordinated global response.

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.

SARS was a very important event... And many countries have learned from SARS... The SARS event sort of gave them additional impetus and the sense of urgency for them to really revise the International Health Regulations.

Getting ready for a global pandemic is every bit as important as nuclear deterrence and avoiding a climate catastrophe.

I work to create systems that can accurately detect pandemics early, determine their likely importance, and, with any luck, crush those that have the potential to devastate us.