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
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.
Doctors and nurses, with their training and their experiences, they would be able to detect unusual patterns of disease. That's why we say it is important for every country to have a proper surveillance system. The function of the surveillance system is to detect unusual patterns of diseases.
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.
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.
Based on assessment of all available information and following several expert consultations, I have decided to raise the current level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 4 to phase 5.
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.
When is the next time? We don't have a time frame. I suspect it will likely to be November, if history is anything to go by.
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.
No one can say when this will end.
So far there is no evidence for increased chance of human-to-human transmission,
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 have a window of opportunity to prevent a pandemic or at least delay the spread of a pandemic.