Margaret Chan

“Tobacco is the only industry that produces products to make huge profits and at the same time damage the health and kill their consumers.”

“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.”

“I have a reputation for being a straight-talker.”

“At a time of multiple calamities in the world, we cannot allow the loss of essential antimicrobials, essential cures for many millions of people, to become the next global crisis.”

“Mexico is a safe, as well as a beautiful and warmly gracious, place to visit.”

“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.”

“This change to a higher phase of alert is a signal to governments, to ministries of health and other ministries, to the pharmaceutical industry and the business community that certain actions now should be undertaken with increased urgency and at an accelerated pace.”

“New diseases like SARS and bird flu cause anxiety in the community. People get worried, some to the extent that it even affects their health. You feel very sad, and yet you must carry on and maintain your cool in very trying and difficult moments. You have to tough it out.”

“We cannot think of the old days when we were dealing with SARS. It's a totally different ballgame now.”

“I think U.N. organizations are important organizations. They exist for good reasons. And we also admit that there is room for us to improve the way we do business. The WHO will be a very positive and proactive partner in the overall U.N. reform, which is also important.”

“The International Health Partnership Plus is addressing the need to harmonize development assistance and reduce the current waste, duplication, and high transaction costs.”

“A health system that lacks commodities for managing high-mortality infectious diseases and the main killers of mothers and young children will not have an adequate impact. By the same token, even the best-stocked delivery system will have an inadequate impact if it fails to reach the poor.”

“Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. This will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry. A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The WHO is the lead agency in health in the United Nations system, and clearly we have very important functions to play.”

“Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously, precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world.”

“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.”