It's understandable that when something new comes out that's unfamiliar, scary, and has severe outcomes, it gets a lot of media attention. In fact, the Zika outbreak is unprecedented. We've never before identified a mosquito-borne infection that can cause fetal malformations.

Tom Frieden

I loved clinical practice, but in public health, you can impact more than one person at a time. The whole society is your patient.

Tom Frieden

Vaccines and antibiotics have made many infectious diseases a thing of the past; we've come to expect that public health and modern science can conquer all microbes. But nature is a formidable adversary.

Tom Frieden

Our progress against malaria is impressive. But vigilance remains a critical ingredient to protect the health of all people.

Tom Frieden

Thanks to malaria elimination efforts in United States in the 1940s, most people in the U.S. today have never had any direct contact with the disease, and most doctors have never seen a case. That success means it's easy to have a relaxed attitude about protecting ourselves.

Tom Frieden

The importance in what we're seeing in countries around the world is a poorly regulated and poorly functioning private sector using irrational and ineffective medications that result in the emergence of drug-resistance tuberculosis. What we've done is begun a program to rapidly improve infection control in places that are treating TB patients.

Tom Frieden

Vaccination is the single most important step people can take to protect themselves from influenza.

Tom Frieden

Physical activity - even if you don't lose an ounce, you'll live longer, feel healthier and be less likely to get cancer, heart disease, stroke and arthritis. It's the closest thing we have to a wonder drug.

Tom Frieden

Mosquito control in the United States is very much a local and state activity. Some states have excellent programs, other states not so much. It's one of the reasons it's so urgent to identify and spread best practices to try and track and reduce mosquito populations.

Tom Frieden

Stopping TB requires a government program that functions every day of the year, and that's hard in certain parts of the world. And partly it's because of who tuberculosis affects: It tends to affect the poor and disenfranchised most.

Tom Frieden

When my son was little, he asked me: 'Daddy, which is worser, sugar or salt?' I still don't know the answer.

Tom Frieden

If we vaccinate well, if we increase those vaccination rates, we can stop measles just as we stopped it before.

Tom Frieden

What works most effectively for quelling disease outbreaks like Ebola is not quarantining huge populations. What works is focusing on and isolating the sick and those in direct contact with them as they are at highest risk of infection. This strategy worked with SARS, and it worked during the H1N1 flu pandemic.

Tom Frieden

The Zika virus invades and disrupts the development of the fetal brain, but the effects on the brains of infants and young children are unknown.

Tom Frieden

CDC is supporting community efforts by establishing competitive grants to support local programs to help individuals and families to get healthy and stay healthy.

Tom Frieden

Cigars, cigarettes, and hookah tobacco are all smoked tobacco - addictive and deadly. We need effective action to protect our kids from struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine.

Tom Frieden

People traveling to malaria-prone areas can protect themselves by taking steps such as taking antimalarial drugs, using insect repellent, sleeping under insecticide-treated bed-nets, and wearing protective clothing.

Tom Frieden

Between 2000 and 2010, malaria mortality rates fell by 26 percent around the world. According to the latest World Health Organization estimates, there were about 219 million cases of malaria in 2010 and an estimated 660,000 deaths.

Tom Frieden

Zika is spread by mosquitos. They are tough to control. It will bite four or five people at one blood meal. They can breed in the amount of water it takes to fill up a bottle cap or, theoretically, even a drop of water. You have to get rid of maybe 90% of them or more before you protect people.

Tom Frieden

As director of the CDC, one of the best parts of my job is announcing good news.

Tom Frieden

More than 50 million people around the world died during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. That's why we have epidemiologists all over the world tracking whether new strains of flu emerge.

Tom Frieden