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
No one can say when this will end.
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,
We cannot think of the old days when we were dealing with SARS. It's a totally different ballgame now.
With increased surveillance its not unusual that you would pick up more cases.
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.
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.
We have a window of opportunity to prevent a pandemic or at least delay the spread of a pandemic.
We are taking very drastic actions to reduce the risk of avian influenza to animals and birds,
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,
Timing is unpredictable and the severity is uncertain.