Margaret Chan quotes

Margaret Chan is a Chinese-Canadian physician and former Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). Her leadership focused on addressing global health challenges such as influenza pandemics and improving healthcare systems. She has played a significant role in shaping modern public health policies worldwide. Here are 36 of her quotes:

We need to empower women. Give women a voice in the decision-making process. Give women a political voice where they can champion, for their own welfare. And, of course, for us. United Nations - organizations, agencies - we need to do our part.

Margaret Chan

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.

Margaret Chan

The way I look at - speaking as a woman - I understand what it means to be a daughter, and to be a wife, and to be a mother, and also to be a career woman. The multiple roles that women can play in a society if given the opportunity is really a tremendous asset.

Margaret Chan

For a pandemic of moderate severity, this is one of our greatest challenges: helping people to understand when they do not need to worry, and when they do need to seek urgent care.

Margaret Chan

There are two things that I feel very happy about from my tenure as Director of Health in Hong Kong: we introduced primary health care and preventive services from conception to old age; and we worked with herbalists to put Traditional Chinese Medicine on a firm footing of promotion, development and regulation.

Margaret Chan

In my view, the best way is to go back to the basics: the values, principles, and approaches of primary health care. Abundant evidence, over decades of experience, supports this view. Countries at similar levels of socioeconomic development achieve better health outcomes for the money when services are organized according to the principles of primary health care.

Margaret Chan

I want to remind governments in every country of the range and force of counter-tactics used by the tobacco industry – an industry that has much money and no qualms about using it in the most devious ways imaginable.

Margaret Chan

Health systems are social institutions. They do far more for society than deliver babies and pills, like a post office delivering parcels. Properly managed and adequately financed, a fair and equitable health system contributes to social cohesion and stability.

Margaret Chan

The reduction of poverty is the over-arching objective of the MDGs. Progress is not measured by national or global averages, but by how well the health of the poor improves. If we miss the poor, we miss the point. 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.

Margaret Chan

When you're dealing with new and emerging diseases, you have no idea and you can't predict in advance what would happen.

Margaret Chan

For the first time in history, we can track the evolution of a pandemic in real-time... Influenza viruses are notorious for their rapid mutation and unpredictable behaviour.

Margaret Chan

I want us to be judged by the impact we have on the health of the people of Africa and the health of women. Improvements in the health of the people of Africa and the health of women are key indicators of the performance of WHO. This is a health organization for the whole world... But we must focus our attention on the people in greatest need.

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.

Margaret Chan

Pandemic influenza is by nature an international issue; it requires an international solution.

Margaret Chan

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.

Margaret Chan

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.

Margaret Chan

I have a reputation for being a straight-talker.

Margaret Chan

The international community should treat this as a window of opportunity to ramp up preparedness and response.

Margaret Chan

All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans. Countries should remain on high alert for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia.

Margaret Chan

The unique nature about the influenza virus is its great potential for changes, for mutation.

Margaret Chan

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.

Margaret Chan

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.

Margaret Chan