17 Quotes by Norman Swan

We never got rid of HIV but we have great treatments for it, we never got rid of bacterial infections but we've got antibiotics.

I've always been interested in pandemics, where they come from, how they arise, and the key feature which really fascinates me is that the biology of the bug is the least of it.

I've been interested in pandemics for decades. I even made a four-part series for Channel 4 UK and SBS called 'Invisible Enemies' which screened in the early 90s.

There's never been a pandemic which hasn't exploited a change in the way we live - politics, social structure, technological change, warfare, it's always something that we humans have done or are doing that's tilled the soil for the pandemic and the solution to it is usually social, behavioural and political.

When a prevention campaign works, nothings happens!

I was going to be a surgeon at one point, and I remember being taught that the surgical heroes aren't the ones that can staunch the bleeding; what you want is the surgeon that doesn't cause any bleeding in the first place.

Most of us would be happy with one big idea implemented in our lifetimes.

My role as a broadcast journalist is to analyse information and pass it on to the community. And also as a journalist to hold governments to account.

I have often wondered what it was like to be in the trenches during war, knowing that tomorrow morning you have got to go over the top and that you might die and what a surreal feeling, in addition to fear, that might be.