[The outbreak is] the greatest peacetime challenge that the United Nations and its agencies have ever faced.
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.
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.