Are We Prepared?

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   Are We Prepared? An Exclusive Interview with WHO Director-General Margaret Chan

By Joanne Silberner and Marissa Miley on Mon, 28 Sep 2015

Margaret Chan has led the World Health Organization for the last nine years. During her leadership, the world has suffered an onslaught of infectious disease outbreaks—avian influenza, H1N1 (swine flu), cholera, and MERS, to name a few. Then Ebola hit. If the Director-General of the WHO was not a well-known figure before Ebola, the epidemic that began in 2014 and sharply exposed the shortcomings of the world’s premiere health agency has put her name—and the WHO—front and center.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/margaret-chan-interview/

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arirish Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Admin Group Joined: June 19 2013 Location: Arkansas Status: Offline Points: 39215	Post Options Post Reply Quote arirish Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Are We Prepared? Posted: September 29 2015 at 8:57am
	Are We Prepared? An Exclusive Interview with WHO Director-General Margaret Chan By Joanne Silberner and Marissa Miley on Mon, 28 Sep 2015 Margaret Chan has led the World Health Organization for the last nine years. During her leadership, the world has suffered an onslaught of infectious disease outbreaks—avian influenza, H1N1 (swine flu), cholera, and MERS, to name a few. Then Ebola hit. If the Director-General of the WHO was not a well-known figure before Ebola, the epidemic that began in 2014 and sharply exposed the shortcomings of the world’s premiere health agency has put her name—and the WHO—front and center. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/margaret-chan-interview/
	Buy more ammo!

Guests Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Guest Group	Post Options Post Reply Quote Guests Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: September 30 2015 at 4:41am
	Don't expect Margaret Chan to save you in a crises, funding for WHO's operations in West Africa was cut on or round the time of the EBOLA epidemic in Dec 2013 ?, the people WHO assigned to coordinate the emergency response did not have the experience of handling such a large and complex outbreak ? furthermore the entire operation was underfunded from the start ?. WHO was advised on many occasions by people with the necessary training and expertise such as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) that WHO must become more proactive during the early stages of the EBOLA outbreak, obviously WHO did not take their advice and chose to deploy inexperienced and inadequately trained personal for that specific operation ?. I am not surprised that she is still in the position of WHO Director-General, she must be doing a excellent job for the WHO organization and those that pay her salary ?.

Guests Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Guest Group	Post Options Post Reply Quote Guests Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: October 02 2015 at 11:52am
	As MERS virus spreads, is WHO doing enough? If worse comes to the worse, and MERS does become a global public health emergency, how well could the authorities deal with a deadly virus for which there is no vaccine? “If a global pandemic were to strike tomorrow, there is still no well-resourced, coordinated international response in place to kick in,”warns Dr Joanne Liu, International President of Medecin sans Frontieres. Meanwhile, WHO itself has been experiencing a funding crisis, as its budget has been slashed by around $1billion, and its outbreak and diseases budget was halved between 2012-13 and 2014-15, and a further reduction is planned for 2016-7. Staff levels have been drastically cut. The organization has around 35 percent fewer employees than in 2009, and the WHO’s Pandemic and Epidemic Disease Department has just 52 regular employees. At a time when WHO needs more resources, it is having to make do with less. A world which spends billions on arms, but which is cutting the money for global health emergency funding, has got a strange sense of priorities. The fact that we don’t yet have a vaccine for MERS is also scandalous. The problem is that the big privately owned pharmaceutical companies don’t know how much profit there would be in it - bearing in mind the research that would be needed - and governments (many of whom are restrained by austerity programs), don’t seem too keen to foot the bill either. Courtesy of RT.COM http://www.rt.com/op-edge/268381-mers-who-virus-un/

Technophobe Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Assistant Admin Joined: January 16 2014 Location: Scotland Status: Offline Points: 88450	Post Options Post Reply Quote Technophobe Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: October 02 2015 at 1:22pm
	Of course they are! Whitewash costs money you know!
	How do you tell if a politician is lying? His lips or pen are moving.

arirish Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Admin Group Joined: June 19 2013 Location: Arkansas Status: Offline Points: 39215	Post Options Post Reply Quote arirish Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: October 02 2015 at 1:29pm
	Technophobe said-Whitewash costs money you know!
	Buy more ammo!