The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems.

For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.

The only way to do the human rights thing is to do the right thing medically.

You can't have public health without a public health system. We just don't want to be part of a mindless competition for resources. We want to build back capacity in the system.

The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right.

I mean, everybody should have access to medical care. And, you know, it shouldn't be such a big deal.

With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others- or, in a word, partnership.