18 quotes found
"Children's health depends on the mothers, so if we can scale up the achievement of the MDGs, it would benefit people in Africa. We should also look at how we can empower women to leverage their resources and their creativity and become change agents. We have seen example after example where women who are appropriately motivated and given the right environment can make changes, not only to themselves but also to their families and their communities."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Efforts to prevent noncommunicable diseases go against the business interests of powerful economic operators. In my view, this is one of the biggest challenges facing health promotion. [...] it is not just Big Tobacco anymore. Public health must also contend with Big Food, Big Soda, and Big Alcohol. All of these industries fear regulation, and protect themselves by using the same tactics. Research has documented these tactics well. They include front groups, lobbies, promises of self-regulation, lawsuits, and industry-funded research that confuses the evidence and keeps the public in doubt. Tactics also include gifts, grants, and contributions to worthy causes that cast these industries as respectable corporate citizens in the eyes of politicians and the public. They include arguments that place the responsibility for harm to health on individuals, and portray government actions as interference in personal liberties and free choice. This is formidable opposition. [...] When industry is involved in policy-making, rest assured that the most effective control measures will be downplayed or left out entirely. This, too, is well documented, and dangerous. In the view of WHO, the formulation of health policies must be protected from distortion by commercial or vested interests."
"I have been studying inherited susceptibility of cancer through affected families. The goal is to identify genes that are involved in cancer development."
"I was attracted to studies of cancer families because epidemiological studies show that virtually all cancers manifest a tendency to aggregate in families. Close relatives of a cancer patient are at increased risk of that neoplasm, and perhaps other forms of cancer. The excess site-specific cancer risk is exceptionally high for carriers of certain cancer genes, in whom the attack rate can approach 100 percent. In candidate cancer families, the possibility that clustering is on the basis of chance must be excluded through epidemiological studies that establish the presence of an excess cancer risk. Predisposed families are candidates for laboratory studies to identify the inherited susceptibility factors. These investigations have led to the identification and isolation of human cancer genes, the tumor suppressor genes. These cancer genes are among more than 200 single-gene traits associated with the development of cancer. Approximately a dozen inherited susceptibility genes have been definitively identified, and many more are being sought. From studies of retinoblastoma and other rare cancers, important new information was generated about the fundamental biology of cancers that arise in many patients. Isolation of an inherited cancer susceptibility gene provides opportunities for presymptomatic testing of at-risk relatives. However, testing of healthy individuals also raise important issues regarding informed consent, confidentiality and potential for adverse psychological, social and economic effects."
"I walked into a village with a reporter. We heard loud wailing coming from one of the homes. When we arrived at the house, I saw a child clutching at the mother's leg. The mother had hung herself because she had AIDS and couldn't treat herself."
"Speaking out cost me my job, my marriage and my happiness at the time, but it also helped save the lives of thousands and thousands of people."
"Countless families were broken apart and ruined by AIDS, leaving many AIDS orphans. They had no one to turn to."
"Research shows a (COVID-19) virus on a smooth surface survives for several hours. It can survive for days with suitable temperature and humidity. For example, it is suitable for it to live in a 20°C air-conditioned environment or in 40 to 50 percent humidity. Some researches have shown previously discovered coronaviruses can possibly survive for five days."
"I believe that a healthy society should not have only one voice."
"We are deeply saddened by the passing of Dr Li Wenliang. We all need to celebrate work that he did on 2019 nCoV."
"I simply couldn't believe what I was seeing...All the doctors and nurses who saw yesterday's news were furious...Zhang Wenkang is ... abandoning even his most basic standards of integrity as a doctor."
"I think many people believe that detaining him was stupid...and he did nothing wrong."
"Had I known how things would turn out, I wouldn’t care if I got criticised. I would’ve told the whole world."