All things that I learn, primarily as a leader, but also as a follower. Top-down and bottom-up, there are always insights on leadership that we learn from time to time. Learn with me. (Well, I'm including a bit of business and property items...)
NEW DELHI - India marked a year since its last new case of polio on Friday, a major milestone in a country once considered the epicentre of the disease and one that gives hope the scourge can be eradicated worldwide.
There were 150,000 cases of the highly contagious virus in India in 1985, but the country has now gone 12 months since discovering a new case - in an 18-month-old girl in the eastern state of West Bengal.
India, which until recently accounted for half of all the polio cases in the world, is one of four countries - with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria - where the disease is still officially endemic.
But if all laboratory tests for the wild polio virus return negative in January, India will follow recent success stories Niger and Egypt and be removed from the endemic list by the World Health Organisation by mid-February.
There was cautious optimism in New Delhi as health workers and the government celebrated the milestone while stressing that the virus - which mainly affects young children and can cause paralysis and deformed legs - could resurface at any time.
"We are excited and hopeful, at the same time, vigilant and alert," Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said in a statement to mark the occasion.
Since the last new case was reported on January 13 last year, another vast effort to immunise children has seen 2.3 million vaccinators travel across India to deliver 900 million doses.
"What India has achieved is reaching a first milestone in a very important process," Lieven Desomer, head of the polio unit at UN children's agency UNICEF in India, told AFP.
"It's not the end of the road, but it's something to be very proud of.
"Achieving this milestone is going to instil confidence in polio eradication efforts globally. If it can be done here, it can be done everywhere."
India will only be judged to have eradicated the disease if it stays polio-free for another two years.
Polio was one of the most feared diseases of the 20th century for children, but it has been successfully controlled through a programme of vaccination in most countries.
UNICEF figures show India, where the crowded and impoverished northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have historically been the hotspots, had 150,000 cases of the disease in 1985.
This had fallen to about 6,000 in 1991, to 741 in 2009 and to just 42 in 2010.
The decline worldwide, through a concerted effort by governments, UN agencies and private donors, has raised hopes polio might go the way of smallpox, the only disease successfully eradicated globally.
"If we can achieve that it will be of great benefit to the children of the world," said Desomer. "But the last bit is the toughest."
The precipitous fall in polio cases in India is attributed by UNICEF to a huge campaign by the Indian government, which is often pilloried by critics for its failure to tackle malnutrition and poor sanitation.
It represents a rare public health success story in a country where four in 10 children under five are underweight due to malnutrition and only a third of people have access to toilets.
"India's success (with polio) is arguably its greatest public health achievement," said World Health Organisation Director-General Margaret Chan.
Desomer estimated the Indian government contribution to polio eradication to be about $2 billion over the last 10-15 years.
The other two important factors in combating the virus were a new, more efficient oral vaccine introduced in 2010 and partnership comprising the government, private donors and UN agencies.
Proposals include reducing the size of the UN agency's Geneva headquarters by sending some staff to work in less expensive areas, the WHO's director of strategy Daniel Lopez-Acuna told reporters.
The WHO's executive body said after an extraordinary session this week that the organisation was planning "ambitious reforms designed to build on the organisation's already strong foundations and better equip it to respond to public health challenges in the 21st century."
But Lopez-Acuna said not to expect a "big bang". Reforms at the 63-year-old organisation with a staff of nearly 8,500 around the world will be "a process that takes some time," he said.
In May, the WHO's 193 members adopted an austerity budget for 2012-2013 in the face of a deficit of some $300 million (215 million euros) in donor contributions prompted by the global crisis.
Some 300 headquarters staff will be axed, but further reforms are needed.
Resources will increasingly be transferred to in-country programmes, Lopez-Acuna said, and some activities could be shut down entirely depending on funding and priorities.
The executive council's statement Thursday following a three-day meeting said the body would meet again in January to examine ways to "better anticipate and be more flexible in its financing".
In the interim, it authorised the WHO leadership to take "immediate measures", the statement said, without elaborating.
GENEVA - After two days of dispute over the future of smallpox virus samples, member states of the World Health Organization decided Tuesday to postpone their negotiations on the issue for three years.
In a draft resolution put forward on Monday to the 193 WHO member states, Russia and the US sought to conserve the samples, and wanted to begin discussing a possible date for their destruction only in five years.
Many countries, however, want them destroyed as soon as possible and, with no deal in sight after two days, the member states decided to look to the 67th World Health Assembly in three years' time to reexamine the subject.
The question surrounding the destruction of the last official stocks of the deadly virus held by US and Russian laboratories has been recurring at the WHO since 1986.
Washington and Moscow want the viruses kept for scientific reasons, saying that it is necessary to continue research on their vaccines in order to prevent any resurgence of the transmissible disease which was officially eradicated in 1980.
They fear, in particular, that countries may have secretly kept the virus to be used as a biological weapon.
The European Union, Canada, Israel, Monaco, Colombia and China were among countries that support the US and Russia.
However, Iran speaking on behalf of 20 countries, as well as Thailand, Zimbabwe and Malaysia, were strongly against, saying that immediate destruction of the virus must be imposed.
The question surrounding the destruction of the last official stocks of the deadly virus held by the US and Russian laboratories has been recurring at the WHO since 1986.
Washington and Moscow want the viruses kept for scientific reasons, saying that it is necessary to continue research on their vaccines in order to prevent any resurgence of the transmissible disease which was eradicated in 1979.
They fear, in particular, that countries may have secretly kept the virus to be used as a biological weapon.
In a draft resolution put forward on Monday to the 193 WHO member states, Russia and the US once again sought to conserve the samples, and wanted to begin discussing a possible date for their destruction only in five years.
"We feel that we do not have sufficient guarantees on the efficiency and the preparation of the vaccines," explained the Russian envoy.
"Destruction will be irreversible," he added, noting that it is necessary to be "doubly prudent on a question that concerns security of all humanity."
"After the research, we can determine a date," he added.
The European Union, Canada, Israel, Monaco, Colombia and China were among countries that supported the move.
However, some 20 countries, including north African states, Iran, Thailand, Zimbabwe and Malaysia, were strongly against the resolution, saying that immediate destruction of the virus must be imposed.
"There is no longer scientific justification to keep these viruses," said a Malaysian diplomat.
"It's been 30 years since we agreed to keep the stocks," noted an Iranian envoy. "It is about time to fix a definitive date" to eradicate them.
Amid the discord, the WHO decided to create a working group to work towards a compromise draft later Monday.
I will let the news tell it all. What do you think?
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Science of man-made life can proceed: White House Posted: 17 December 2010 0010 hrs
WASHINGTON - The White House on Thursday said the controversial field of synthetic biology, or manipulating the DNA of organisms to forge new life forms, poses limited risks and should be allowed to proceed.
An expert panel convened by President Barack Obama advised vigilance and self-regulation as scientists seek ways to create new organisms that could spark useful innovations in clean energy, pollution control and medicine.
"Future developments may raise further objections, but the Commission found no reason to endorse additional federal regulations or a moratorium on work in this field at this time."
The 13-member panel of scientists, ethicists and public policy experts was created by Obama last year.
Its first order of business was to consider the issue of synthetic biology after the J. Craig Venter Institute announced in May it had developed the first self-replicating bacteria cell controlled by a synthetic genome.
Critics said the discovery was tantamount to "playing God", creating organisms without adequate understanding the ramifications, and upsetting the natural order.
Announcing the creation of the "first synthetic cell", lead researcher Craig Venter said at the time it "certainly changed my views of the definitions of life and how life works."
But the commission said Venter's team had not actually created life, since the work mainly involved altering an already existing life form.
"Thoughtful deliberation about the meaning of this achievement was impossible in the hours that elapsed between the breaking news and the initial round of commentaries that ensued," it said in its report.
"Of note, many scientists observe that this achievement is not tantamount to 'creating life' in a scientific sense because the research required a functioning, naturally occurring host cell to accept the synthesized genome."
Commission chair Amy Gutmann said the panel considered a range of approaches to regulating the new scientific field, from allowing unbridled freedom to imposing strict government regulation on experiments.
"We chose a middle course to maximize public benefits while also safeguarding against risks," she said.
"Prudent vigilance suggests that federal oversight is needed and can be exercised in a way that is consistent with scientific progress."
As to the risk of releasing modified organisms into nature, a scenario some have warned could spark biological threats or damage to the ecosystem, "scientists and ethicists advised careful monitoring and review of the research," the panel said.
The panel also urged greater cooperation among federal agencies that oversee product licensing and funding of synthetic biology, and collaboration with world governments and global groups like the World Health Organization.
"Educational classes on the ethical dilemmas raised by synthetic biology should be a mandatory part of training for young researchers, engineers, and others who work in this emerging field," it added.
By LAURAN NEERGAARD,AP Medical Writer AP - Sunday, May 10
WASHINGTON - The most pivotal moments in the swine flu saga are yet to come. Will it sweep through impoverished Southern Hemisphere countries in the next few months? Will it roar back in the rest of the world in the fall? And who will be vaccinated if it does?
In the weeks since swine flu grabbed international attention, and even years before that, some important actions have helped shape the course of this outbreak and the ways the world will handle future epidemics.
It's not clear if this new swine flu strain is a brush fire, sparking up around the globe only to fizzle, or if it will worsen when the regular influenza season hits.
No matter how this story ends, at the very least it has offered a real-world drill to find gaps in the playbook.
"We've been given an opportunity to take a look at this before it really got bad, and we need to," said Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, a prominent pandemic flu specialist. "We better damn well do it now because one day we are going to really be in it for more than a week. If it's not this virus, there will still be another one."
For this virus, the coming months will bring a series of big decisions: Do manufacturers start brewing millions of swine flu vaccine doses? Will they be stockpiled unless the new flu returns or given along with or soon after regular flu shots? Will rich countries share enough with the developing world? Who gets in line first _ the younger people that this strain so far seems to target or the elderly who usually are flu's most vulnerable?
"You may only have one chance to get out ahead of it," Dr. Richard Besser, acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press. "It's important for people to understand that all of these decisions will need to be made with incomplete science."
THE FIRST TURNING POINT
A different virus was the world's wake-up call. SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) started in China, and once it broke out of the mainland in early 2003, it took just weeks to infect more than 8,000 people from 37 countries. The virus killed more than 770 people before it disappeared.
Governments started scrambling to put together plans to handle the next global disease threat. Soon after, bird flu hit Asia, reinforcing the need.
Had the new swine flu hit sooner, before all that pandemic planning, it almost certainly would have spread faster. Even if it proves no more dangerous than garden-variety flu, that's deadly enough; a pandemic is more about geography than super-lethality. By the World Health Organization's tally, between 250,000 and 500,000 people worldwide die each year because of regular winter flu.
UNCOVERING THIS THREAT
As early as February, people in the Mexican hamlet of La Gloria were suffering unusually strong flu symptoms. When officials arrived to investigate in mid-March, nearly half the 3,000 villagers came out seeking medical help. About 450 were diagnosed with acute respiratory infections and given antibiotics. Mexico was investigating, but not until April 12 would the outside world _ the CDC and Pan American Health Organization _ start getting official word of the unexplained illness that eventually would be blamed for dozens of deaths throughout Mexico.
By then CDC already was on the trail of swine flu in California. The virus had spread before anyone knew it existed.
Preparation had paid off. In its pandemic planning, the U.S. starting in 2005 put money into researching better influenza detection. Studies of new methods found two unrelated children in San Diego with a strain of Type A influenza that turned out to be a never-before-seen type of swine flu. Puzzled, CDC announced the cases and started hunting more. On April 23, the agency confirmed five more illnesses in California and Texas and put all states on alert.
"At what point does unusual become concerning and at what point does concern lead to action?" Besser said. "We had to make that call."
That same day, CDC and a Canadian lab that Mexico had consulted delivered the bad news: The new flu was in Mexico, too.
Could Mexico have signaled a problem sooner? The Pan American Health Organization dismisses the question as one for historians.
"We would have done everything the same if we had it to do over again," said Hugo Lopez-Gatell Ramirez, deputy director of Mexico's Intelligence Unit for Health Emergencies.
AGGRESSIVE ACTION
With the diagnosis, Mexico's government immediately ordered the closure of all schools, museums, libraries and theaters in Mexico City. The following days brought increasingly drastic actions. Schools nationwide and other businesses shut down, streets mostly emptied and soldiers handed out millions of face masks.
With a handful of known illnesses at first, the U.S. raced antiflu drugs from a government stockpile _ enough for 11 million people _ out to every state. After a large outbreak at a New York City school, apparently spread by students who vacationed in Mexico, U.S. schools started closing. Ultimately about 468,000 students around the country were affected before the CDC decided that schools should reopen because the virus was mild.
Overall, "what happened was not overreaction. It was a prudent response," said Michael Leavitt, the Bush administration health secretary who led development of the U.S. pandemic flu plan and advised other governments on theirs. "If imminent information about terrorism is known to authorities, they need to react. A pandemic is sort of nature's terrorist."
Young children tend to be initial spreaders of regular winter flu, taking it home to family and friends, which is one reason that school closings are included in pandemic plans. But in this case, travelers were early spreaders.
"I'm not saying that was the right approach or the wrong approach, but what we've learned is we need to be proportionate in our response with what the risk is in our community," said flu specialist Osterholm.
PANDEMIC OR NOT
The World Health Organization, following its post-SARS guidelines, declared an international emergency the day after Mexico's outbreak made headlines, to spur countries to check where else the new flu had spread _ eventually to two dozen countries and counting.
Days later, the WHO issued an unprecedented warning: The world was close to a full-fledged pandemic. Sustained spread in regions beyond North America, rather than smallish outbreaks, would tip the scale.
For years, the U.S. had run drills. What would it do if bird flu started rapidly spreading in Asia? Close the borders to buy a little time. Reality brought a surprise.
The new swine flu started in North America, too late to close any borders. While the U.S. joined other countries in discouraging travel to hardest-hit Mexico, and some nations discouraged travel to the U.S. and Canada, too, once flu starts spreading in numerous places, such actions have little effect.
Asia remained largely untouched. China, no doubt recalling the harrowing days of SARS, tried to keep it that way by quarantining dozens of Mexicans for days.
STILL TO COME
What happens to all those antiflu medicines that were shipped to U.S. states but not used? They're waiting, under guard, in case they're needed come fall. Leavitt, the former health secretary, said that's the next weakness. Flying in drugs is easy; getting them to the sick is hard.
"The further into a pandemic you get, the more spontaneity that's required and the more lack of preparation reveals itself," he said.
Then there's the vaccine dilemma.
Makers could be told to start brewing doses in a few weeks. But that will take months and require testing, led by the U.S., of initial shots to see if they induce immunity, with one dose or two, and seem safe. The last mass vaccination against a different swine flu, in the U.S. in 1976, was marred by reports of a paralyzing side effect _ and that time the flu didn't return.
"One of the lessons of the '76 experience is to take account of the uncertainty," said Institute of Medicine President Harvey Fineberg. "Be able to take account of new information to modify your course."
If vaccine is ordered, would developing countries get a fair share? The WHO is calling vaccine makers together in late May to push for fair access. Regardless, any shots will come too late for the Southern Hemisphere, where influenza season is about to start.
World authorities will closely track the new swine flu there, for help deciding whether to order vaccinations for the rest of the world starting in the fall. The big worry is that the virus will mutate, becoming more severe.
"The thing that's keeping me up at night right now is that feeling of dodging the bullet, in the sense that people are taking a sigh of relief too soon," the CDC's Besser told the AP.
May cooler heads prevail during this Influenza A outbreak
by Simon Tay xtra@mediacorp.com.sg
05:55 AM May 09, 2009
South Koreans eat boned rib of pork during a campaign for its safety and the consumption of pork which prices have nosedived follwoing reports of swine flu at a local meat market in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 7, 2009.
THE Influenza A (H1N1) virus, often called “swine flu”, is in the air.
I was in San Francisco last week just after California declared an emergency to deal with the outbreak. There was a thermal scanner at the airport but no one asked where I had been. I cleared immigration quickly.
At dinner, I ordered an old-style American pork chop. Only when the dish came to the table did I think twice about it.
On the one hand, the World Health Organization (WHO) says pork will not be a source of infection. On the other, dozens of countries have suspended trade in pigs and pork. I ate my pork chop. It was delicious.
Experts are still uncertain how dangerous the new virus will be. To date, the WHO has reported 1,490 confirmed cases in 23 countries - about half in Mexico.
They include 38 of the 50 states in the United States, 12 European Union countries, Hong Kong and South Korea.
WHO officials have already declared a level 5 situation and believe a full pandemic is likely.
When humans face an unknown danger and demand urgent action, panic usually results.
It is true that past influenza pandemics were lethal, like the Asian flu of 1958 that killed two million people. But the early mortality figures of the current H1N1 outbreak are moderate and the virus responds to existing drugs.
We should not be complacent, but panic too is contagious and dangerous. Witness 2003’s Sars outbreak. Cities became ghost towns, hotels were empty and economies suffered. Today, when the global economy is already in crisis, a repeat of that situation is the last thing we need.
Silliness and misinformation spread. US Vice-President Joe Biden remarked he would avoid all future air travel and then had to recant under pressure. Indonesia’s Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari is reported to believe, without any medical basis, that H1N1 may be more compatible with people of Spanish origin than Indonesians.
Tough action is already being taken by some governments.
Mexico shut down for five days, taking advantage of a holiday spell to try to break the circle of contagion. Hong Kong responded to its first case by sealing off Metropark Hotel where the flu victim stayed, locking in some 300 guests and staff for seven days.
China quarantined some 70 visitors from Mexico, even though they did not show symptoms. It also announced tighter visa measures for all US visitors.
Tough measures indeed. But what seems tough to one man can be interpreted as draconian, misguided and unfair by another. Mexico for example, has complained about China’s actions and Singapore’s new visa requirements. Pig farmers in Egypt protested when their animals were culled.
Stay cool, keep calm
We have to accept that only so much can be done to isolate the flu and police borders. Even if pigs can’t fly, the swine flu can in our globalised world.
This is especially if the flu spreads through the United States, a major business and travel hub. Isolation is not a long-term option. But countries can and should do more to prepare. After experiences with Sars and avian flu, Asian states are better prepared than most.
In each country, hospitals will need to deal with quarantined people and confirmed cases. For confirmed cases, officials have to be ready to track down the transmission trail, as they did during Sars. Ramping up public hygiene, as seen in the reviving of the Singapore’s OK campaign, is another plus.
Regional efforts can also help. Asean health officials have already teleconferenced to exchange information and coordinate their efforts.
An Asean stockpile of anti-viral drugs, currently stored in Singapore, is being earmarked by its health ministers and their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea.
If the problem spreads through the US and North America, perhaps the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) process will need to respond, as it did during Sars.
Sars’ scars
But even if Sars prepared Asia to cope better, it has also left scars.
Then, some countries were judged as acting too slowly or ineffectively. In Hong Kong, Sars was one more nail in the political coffin for then Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa.
Governments will now want to show more vigilance, and some of this will border on jumpiness.
The other issue was the panic that led to the needless shutdown of society and economic catastrophe. Watchful but calm heads, rational decisions and solid preparation must instead be our response.
In the coming weeks, I must travel from New York to Cambodia, Japan, Singapore, Geneva, and maybe Manila and Bangkok. If I change my plans, it will not be out of fear of H1N1, but more to avoid the inconveniences that have resulted from the countermeasures.
As I go along, I plan to eat a special pork dish in each place, like tonkatsu in Japan and bak kut teh in Singapore. And I will try to remember not to sneeze in front of any immigration officer.
WEEKEND XTRA
The writer is chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs and the 2009 Schwartz Fellow at the Asia Society in New York. He was chairman of the National Environment Agency during the Sars crisis.
With two pandemics under her belt, few are as qualified
Avoiding open fights is kind of the sine qua non of working for an international organisation. But when it comes to protecting public health, I don't think she would hesitate for a second to do whatever is necessary, including being at odds with a WHO member state.
Dr Jeffrey Koplan, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Dr Chan
BORN in Hong Kong in 1947, Ms Margaret Chan never intended to study medicine.
That did not stop her from eventually being appointed Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2006, putting her at the frontline of the battle against viruses which have the potential to sweep across the planet and kill millions.
She trained as a teacher at the Northcote College of Education in Hong Kong and then spent a year at the Queen Elizabeth Government High School teaching English, geography, mathematics and home economics to junior students.
She became a doctor out of love, not for medicine but for her then new husband, David Chan.
When he left Hong Kong to study in Canada in 1969, she worried the long distance would end their relationship. Her mother told her to follow her heart.
When he decided to become a doctor, she worried that his medical studies would leave little opportunity for them to spend time together.
So, she enrolled alongside him at the University of Western Ontario.
The couple returned to Hong Kong after graduation, but Dr Chan found few openings in her field of interest, pediatrics, and instead joined the health department. Her rise was rapid, although she modestly attributes her success to luck and the departure of many senior people from the island in the run-up to Hong Kong reverting to China in 1997.
She earned a Masters in Public Health from the National University of Singapore before going to Harvard Business School in 1991 for a three-month management course.
"I learned that there is a cost to every decision, and whether or not you impose a public health order has costs to industry and the public," she said.
"There is also a cost for investing in preparedness (for an outbreak), and a much bigger cost for not investing."
Over this past week, as the world has watched the spread of swine flu, Dr Chan has been holed up in a WHO "war room" at its Geneva headquarters, which is running around the clock to co-ordinate an action plan against the virus.
"Dr Chan is running the show; she is holding morning and evening briefings. She is very much driving the process," said Mr Mike Ryan, the manager of WHO's Strategic Health Operations centre.
Colleagues describe her as relaxed, affable and media-savvy, a "dynamic leader" who can bind together a consensus.
She once reportedly even sang a song from the musical The King and I in front of British civil servants.
From Bird Flu...
But in 1997, Dr Chan's public health career had an inauspicious start.
In May that year, a three-year-old boy in Hong Kong fell sick and died. The laboratory analysis was so surprising that samples were sent to Holland for molecular analysis.
The results came back in August: The boy had died from a virus that ravaged Hong Kong's chicken farms earlier in the year, killing thousands of birds.
No one had ever seen it in humans before. Bird flu had made its first leap over to humans. Over the summer, no new victims emerged and the authorities quietly marked the case down as a one-off.
In November, however, the virus began to spread. By early December, panic was rising.
At the time, Dr Chan was in charge of the island's health department. Her response would catapult her on to the world stage.
As tensions rose in Hong Kong, Dr Chan appeared on local television, advising shoppers that chicken was safe. "I eat it every day, don't panic," she said, perhaps rashly.
Two weeks later, after another 17 infections and five deaths, she realised she had made a mistake. She boldly ordered 1.5 million birds culled, the island's entire population of chickens and ducks. More than 1,000 officials, some of whom had never touched a live chicken before, descended on Hong Kong's markets clad in surgical masks and gloves.
They gassed the birds or slit their throats, dumping them in heavy-duty waste bags. By the end of the week, piles of the bags had built up in the streets and were being torn apart by dogs and rats. "Things could have been done better," Dr Chan admitted.
Despite the botches, her strategy worked. Avian flu was contained and the plaudits poured in.
Thailand gave her the Prince Mahidol award. The Royal College of Physicians gave her the Fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine and the Queen awarded her an OBE.
To Sars...
Six years after its first pandemic threat, Hong Kong suffered another: Sars.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, a pneumonia that killed some 300 people in Hong Kong and infected another 1,755, may also have jumped from animals to humans, with the finger being pointed at bats and palm civets in the Chinese mainland province of Guangdong.
Once again, Dr Chan came under fire for her handling of the situation. This time, a Hong Kong government select committee decided that she was responsible for the city's slow reaction to the disease, and for not pushing the Chinese government for details about an outbreak on the mainland.
She said that no one suspected a new virus. "At that time, what concerned us most was influenza. It was the winter peak for flu as well," she said.
Her media performance, however, was dazzling, as she presided over 61 of the 104 emergency press conferences, held each day at 4.30pm.
"What amazes me most is that the media and I have fostered a close relationship," she later said.
She became a public hero through her regular and calming appearances on television.
"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," she said.
The 62-year-old, who has a son, was later headhunted by the WHO.
Praised for her role in containing the outbreak, Dr Chan caught the attention of the late former WHO chief Lee Jong Wook.
His team recruited Ms Chan to Geneva, where she headed the department responsible for fighting infectious disease threats. She became WHO's director general after Mr Lee's sudden death in 2006.
"She has the courage to make decisions and make the right decisions based on the scientific evidence", recalled Mr David Heymann, a former assistant director-general at WHO.
Agreeing Dr Jim Yong Kim, the incoming president of Dartmouth College who recruited Dr Chan when he worked at WHO, said: "I couldn't imagine the world in better hands."
And with the experience of dealing with two major pandemics under her belt, there can be few people as qualified as Dr Chan to tackle the current crisis. Adapted from The Daily Telegraph
Leadership. Management. All things that I learn, primarily as a leader, but also as a follower. Top-down and bottom-up, there are always insights on leadership that we learn from time to time. Is a Manager a Leader? Or is a Leader a Manager? Learn with me. (Well, I'm including a bit of business and property items, too...)
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Leadership. Management. All things that I learn, primarily as a leader, but also as a follower. Top-down and bottom-up, there are always insights on leadership that we learn from time to time. Is a Manager a Leader? Or is a Leader a Manager? Learn with me. (Well, I'm including a bit of business and property items, too...)
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