Global Health Quotes

What the experts are telling me is that there's very little chance that Ebola is going to mutate into something that could spread directly through the air. The real concern is not whether Ebola could go airborne, but whether it could spread faster.

Stopping TB requires a government program that functions every day of the year, and that's hard in certain parts of the world. And partly it's because of who tuberculosis affects: It tends to affect the poor and disenfranchised most.

The key thing you can do to reduce population growth is actually improve health.

We're still missing about a dozen vaccines that will make a huge difference. For adults, we've got HIV and TB are still huge; for kids malaria is still killing a half million kids a year out of that 6 million. We probably need some vaccines, but we need a little more data to make sure we're getting the vaccines that will save the most lives.

I think when smallpox was eliminated, the whole world got pretty excited about that because it's just such a dramatic success.

In the United States, I feel like polio doesn't exist, but it very much does. I've been to many countries and saw how lucky we are that we can go straight to the doctor or the ER in the U.S. I would love for moms in other countries to not experience my fears.

Let us be the ones who say we do not accept that a child dies every three seconds simply because he does not have the drugs you and I have. Let us be the ones to say we are not satisfied that your place of birth determines your right for life. Let us be outraged; let us be loud; let us be bold.

The increasing elderly population, rising expectations about what should be available, and costs of medical advancement—these are problems all countries face ...

I think Ebola is a great example of where the world really needs to come together. The three countries where this outbreak took place have had a lot of civil war, very weak health systems. And so, it did take a while for people to understand ....that eventually what we saw was a very unique Ebola epidemic. I think it is quite impressive what's being pulled together, and I think we will be able to get this under control.

Let's make the best use of technology to work for patient safety as well as to fight the rising problem of non-communicable diseases, a big challenge to our country and the world.

Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.

Malaria is a disease that kills one to three million people a year. 300 to 500 million cases are reported. It's estimated that Africa loses about 13 billion dollars a year to the disease. Five dollars can save a life. We can send people to the moon; we can see if there's life on Mars - why can't we get five-dollar nets to 500 million people?

As I came through medical school, it was very exciting because physicians were reaching out to each other, between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and sort of helping to build bridges among, you know, people, people who were not allowing our government to pit us against each other and to actually take us to the brink of nuclear war. And Physicians for Social Responsibility wound up getting a Peace Prize, a Nobel Peace Prize, which they shared with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.

For all these infectious diseases, the goal is to eventually get rid of them. And to do that we need to invent new tools, but nobody was doing that because there was no money to buy on behalf of the poorest, even the existing tools.

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic first appeared, a lot of the reaction was that it's not happening here. It doesn't exist. It's not on the continent of Africa. Then we moved into this other phase, in which it was kind of like, it's everywhere.

I thought 'The Hot Zone' was fascinating, mesmerizing. It's one of the things that got me interested in Ebola.

'Contagion' should serve as a wake-up call not only about the germs, but perhaps more importantly about the frailty of governance, nationally and worldwide.

Being in a field like healthcare, for me, as someone who is basically on a mission to make a global impact in terms of affordable access to healthcare, I am very, very concerned about the fact that there are a large number of people in this world who need to have some access to basic rights, whether it is in education or healthcare.

The AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide.

Thinking ahead, in 2013, the Japanese government, together with pharmaceutical companies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established a fund for promoting research and development of medical products for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The importance of planning for disease outbreaks was made clear with the Ebola virus.

At no time in history have we succeeded in making, in a timely fashion, a specific vaccine for more than 260 million people.

We have the means of removing starvation and disease. We have almost unlimited power in sight, that can make the waste lands bloom. We have the possibility of banishing disease.... We ... can learn the truth and ... tell it to one another throughout a healthy world that is secure against the ravages of nature. It is the setting for a world of peace and unity. One thing is lacking. Good will and understanding.