Georges Benjamin Health Quotations

In an era during which new and re-emerging diseases, such as the H5N1 avian flu virus, are potential public health threats, Americans should not forget to take the proper precautions to protect their health against the diseases that threaten us today.

I think the overall response was deplorable in terms of the timing and there's plenty of blame go around, but I think the overall public health response was heroic.

The most frustrating thing to me is that FedEx can do that sort of detailed tracking of what it ships, but public health officials can't do the same thing with flu vaccine. The knowledge of where exactly vaccine is ought to be a public resource. We have a lot of work to do.

No one should fool anyone that this is going to happen overnight ... because the health system is so complex.

There's a wave here and we should ride it. It's a terrible tragedy that's potentially there, but we should use it as an opportunity to address what we believe are long-standing areas of neglect in rebuilding the public health infrastructure.

The question is: what happens with our existing funding? We've already had $100 million in reductions in public-health grants in the president's 2006 budget request. Public health is still in a big hole.