Margaret Chan Biography Quotes 7 Report mistakes

Early Life and Training
Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun, widely known as Margaret Chan, was born in 1947 in Hong Kong, which at the time was a British territory. She trained in medicine and public health and entered government service early in her career. From the outset she showed a preference for practical, population-level work over individual clinical practice, a focus that would define her path through Hong Kong's health administration and eventually onto the global stage.

Rise in Hong Kong Public Service
Chan built her reputation inside Hong Kong's Department of Health, progressing through posts that exposed her to maternal and child health, disease control, and health promotion. In 1994 she became Director of Health, the government's top professional health post. She served across a period of institutional change, moving from late colonial administration to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region after 1997. In the post-handover years she worked with senior officials including Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa and later Donald Tsang, navigating the complex interface between public health advice, political decision-making, and public communication in a densely populated, globally connected city.

Confronting Emerging Infections
Chan's first major international exposure came during the 1997 emergence of avian influenza A(H5N1) in Hong Kong. Working alongside leading scientists at the University of Hong Kong, including Malik Peiris and Yuen Kwok-yung, and in concert with veterinary and market authorities, her department supported the unprecedented territory-wide culling of poultry to break transmission. The measure, controversial at the time, was later credited with halting human cases and buying the world time to understand a virus with pandemic potential. The episode highlighted Chan's willingness to take decisive population-wide measures when the balance of risk pointed to early containment.

SARS and Transition to the World Health Organization
The 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak placed Hong Kong and its health leadership under extreme pressure. Hospitals confronted nosocomial spread, public anxiety escalated, and international travel was disrupted. Chan's department faced criticism over the pace and tone of early risk communication and the adequacy of infection control in the first phase of the outbreak. As the crisis evolved, surveillance, isolation, and public messaging tightened, and Hong Kong ultimately drove transmission down. The experience, with its mix of early missteps and rapid learning, left a lasting imprint on Chan's views about preparedness, transparency, and the need for surge capacity.

Later in 2003, she joined the World Health Organization (WHO) to work on communicable diseases and pandemic preparedness. Her move placed her within a leadership cadre that included Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland, followed by Lee Jong-wook, and senior influenza and outbreak experts such as Keiji Fukuda. The shift marked her transition from a city-scale portfolio to work spanning multiple regions and hazards.

Director-General of WHO
After the sudden death of Lee Jong-wook in 2006 and a brief period under acting Director-General Anders Nordstrom, Chan stood for election to lead the organization. She was elected Director-General in late 2006 and went on to serve two terms, concluding in 2017, after which Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus succeeded her.

Her tenure was defined by the challenge of governing across crises while advancing longer-run health system goals. In 2009 she declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern for the H1N1 influenza outbreak and subsequently the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century. Working with technical leads including Keiji Fukuda and with operational partners such as UNICEF and Gavi, she supported vaccine deployment strategies and mechanisms for access in lower-income countries. The response also drew scrutiny, with accusations in some quarters that the pandemic's risks had been overstated. Independent assessments emphasized the uncertainty inherent in early pandemic phases and the need for flexible, evidence-based decision-making, themes Chan often underscored in public briefings.

She pressed the implementation of the revised International Health Regulations (2005), advocating for stronger core capacities in surveillance, laboratories, and risk communication. She championed universal health coverage as a unifying goal for health systems and made the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases a priority, aligning WHO's agenda with a 2011 high-level meeting at the United Nations convened under Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. On tobacco control, she steered continued implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, engaging ministers of health and finance to push policy measures proven to reduce consumption.

Another major inflection point came with the 2014, 2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The speed and scale of the outbreak exposed weaknesses in global and national response capacity. Chan coordinated closely with the UN system, including the office of the Secretary-General and special envoys, and relied on senior WHO responders such as Bruce Aylward to accelerate field operations, logistics, and community engagement. Criticism of WHO's initial pace led her to endorse and then launch deep institutional reforms, culminating in the WHO Health Emergencies Programme to combine technical authority with operational capability under a single platform.

Polio eradication remained a standing priority. When international spread of wild poliovirus reappeared in 2014, she convened the IHR Emergency Committee and declared the situation a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, a move aimed at shoring up vaccination and travel-related risk management while maintaining momentum toward eradication.

Leadership Style and Partnerships
Throughout her time in Geneva, Chan's leadership style blended technical deference with political navigation. She frequently highlighted the role of national ministers and heads of state in delivering results, and she cultivated relationships not only with UN leaders such as Ban Ki-moon but also with philanthropic and civil society partners. Inside WHO she relied on senior advisers and department heads, including outbreak, immunization, and health systems chiefs, to translate strategic goals into operational plans. Externally, she emphasized that equity and access were organizing principles, particularly in allocation of vaccines and essential medicines during emergencies.

Later Years and Influence
After completing her second term in 2017, Chan remained a visible voice in global health, contributing to debates on pandemic preparedness, antimicrobial resistance, and the financing of health systems. She engaged with international forums and academic and policy groups, drawing on lessons from H5N1, SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and polio to argue for sustained investment in core public health functions and for stronger collaboration across the UN system, multilateral development banks, and national governments.

Legacy
Margaret Chan's career spans local, regional, and global arenas of public health. In Hong Kong she is associated with decisive containment measures during the first human H5N1 outbreak and with the hard lessons of SARS. At WHO she presided over an era marked by repeated health emergencies, a heightened focus on universal health coverage, and efforts to adapt an organization built for technical standard-setting to the demands of rapid operational response. The colleagues and counterparts around her, from scientists like Malik Peiris and Yuen Kwok-yung, to WHO leaders such as Gro Harlem Brundtland, Lee Jong-wook, Anders Nordstrom, and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to UN figures like Ban Ki-moon and field leaders including Keiji Fukuda and Bruce Aylward, reflect the networked, collaborative nature of modern global health. Her record illustrates how political leadership, scientific evidence, and institutional reform intersect in the face of evolving health threats.

Our collection contains 7 quotes who is written by Margaret, under the main topics: Health - Decision-Making.