Margaret Chan
Margaret Chan
Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun, OBE, JPis a Hong Kong Chinese and Canadian physician, who serves as the Director-General of the World Health Organizationfor 2006–17. Chan was elected by the Executive Board of WHO on 8 November 2006, and was endorsed in a special meeting of the World Health Assembly on the following day. Chan has previously served as Director of Health in the Hong Kong Government, representative of the WHO Director-General for Pandemic Influenza and WHO Assistant Director-General for Communicable...
NationalityChinese
ProfessionPublic Servant
CountryChina
I have a reputation for being a straight-talker.
Mexico is a safe, as well as a beautiful and warmly gracious, place to visit.
Pandemic influenza is by nature an international issue; it requires an international solution.
Many diseases including malaria, dengue, meningitis - just a few examples - these are what we call climate-sensitive diseases, because such climate dimensions for rainfall, humidity and temperature would influence the epidemics, the outbreaks, either directly influencing the parasites or the mosquitoes that carry them.
The possible impact of the virus [Zika] an extraordinary event and a public health threat to other parts of the world.
WHO has a country office in nearly every developing country, usually located close to the Ministry of Health. Staff in these offices need to do much more to help ministries of health strengthen their national health plans and strategies and then negotiate with development partners to support these priorities and follow these plans.
We must understand that when one country is not safe, the world is not safe. Pandemic influenza, by nature, will go around the world, so it is important for us to work as an international community to get a better handle on the issue.
We cannot think of the old days when we were dealing with SARS. It's a totally different ballgame now.
Time is of the essence. We must act now if we are to have the maximum possible opportunity to contain a pandemic.
Until we see further evidence, we are still at Phase 3 of the pandemic alert,
Timing is unpredictable and the severity is uncertain.
While we cannot predict when or if the H5N1 virus might spark a pandemic, we cannot ignore the warning signs, ... For the first time in human history, we have a chance to prepare ourselves for a pandemic before it arrives.
With increased surveillance its not unusual that you would pick up more cases.
We are not in a pandemic situation. It is still an animal disease.