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
The World Health Organization did a world health report in 2006. In the whole world about 60 countries are in dire situation in terms of having enough doctors. And many of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa. You know, that part of the world alone needs one million doctors.
H5N1 is primarily an animal disease. However, given its expanding geographical scope and that H5N1 is endemic in some countries, our assessment is that the risk of pandemic is great. Timing is unpredictable and the severity is uncertain.
I am encouraged that more work has been done in the last few months compared to before. But still there are many gaps that we need to fill in terms of human and laboratory capacity and infrastructure.
Clearly, countries expressed the wish to have more. But at least we have something to rely upon for the time being.
A human influenza pandemic will be a big problem. But by working together we can respond effectively.
The International Health Partnership Plus is addressing the need to harmonize development assistance and reduce the current waste, duplication, and high transaction costs.
...we hope to stop the transmission in six to nine months
Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise in Europe and elsewhere in the world. We are losing our first-line antimicrobials. Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in intensive care units.
After all it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.
I have a reputation for being a straight-talker.
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.
We cannot think of the old days when we were dealing with SARS. It's a totally different ballgame now.
Until we see further evidence, we are still at Phase 3 of the pandemic alert,