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
My argument is, whatever resources you put in place, compared to the possible economic loss in the event of a pandemic, is peanuts.
My advice ... is that in selecting fish, perhaps at this juncture, it would be wise to select freshwater fish and other chilled fish from other parts of the world,
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.
So far there is no evidence for increased chance of human-to-human transmission,
They have agreed to donate another 2 million courses, that is 20 million doses, for use by affected countries who reported human cases to reduce morbidity and mortality and to delay the spread of the infection.
If the country has invested in the training of doctors or nurses or midwives for that matter, people are beginning to say, 'Should we not ask them to serve a number of years in the country who invested in their training?' I think this is now coming to be an interesting discussion.
New and emerging infections keep coming back and the world needs a collective defense system, and that requires international cooperation and collaboration, in the name of global solidarity.
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.
Until we see further evidence, we are still at Phase 3 of the pandemic alert,
Clearly, countries expressed the wish to have more. But at least we have something to rely upon for the time being.
In view of the situation in Iraq, I was on the phone talking to the company and they are willing to provide in the order of 7-10,000 treatment courses and we are trying to ship them as soon as possible to the ground.
Buying time will allow us to fast-track pandemic vaccine production. It will allow governments to put in place a host of emergency public health measures that will reduce mortality and morbidity, and social and economic disruption.
There has been a meeting and discussions are still in progress. The talks have been taking place between the two sides here and in the United States.
Timing is unpredictable and the severity is uncertain.