Abstract
A robust health infrastructure in every country is the most effective long-term preparedness strategy for global health emergencies. This includes not only health systems and their human resources, but also countries’ legal infrastructure for health: the laws and policies that empower, obligate and sometimes limit government and private action. The law is also an important tool in health promotion and protection. Public health professionals play important roles in health law – from the development of policies, through their enforcement, to the scientific evaluation of the health impact of laws. Member States are already mandated to communicate their national health laws and regulations to the World Health Organization (WHO). In this paper we propose that WHO has the authority and credibility to support capacity-building in the area of health law within Member States, and to make national laws easier to access, understand, monitor and evaluate. We believe a strong case can be made to donors for the funding of a public health law centre or unit, that has adequate staffing, is robustly networked with its regional counterparts and is integrated into the main work of WHO. The mission of the unit or centre would be to define and integrate scientific and legal expertise in public health law, both technical and programmatic, across the work of WHO, and to conduct and facilitate global health policy surveillance.
Highlights
At times of global health emergencies, such as the Ebola and Zika virus disease outbreaks, the world looks to the World Health Organization (WHO) for leadership
When problems are perceived in the handling of a crisis,[1,2] there are sometimes calls for changes to the international legal instruments that set the agency’s powers, duties and procedures for action, the International Health Regulations (IHR).[3,4]
The IHR, which are binding on all WHO Member States, are a logical target for legal concern, since they set out basic rules of international law requiring countries to strengthen their national surveillance and response capacities, and to share important information with the global community.[5]
Summary
At times of global health emergencies, such as the Ebola and Zika virus disease outbreaks, the world looks to the World Health Organization (WHO) for leadership. We argue in this paper that the most critical legal need for action in global public health generally, including emergency preparedness, is at the national level. Many nations lack the basic laws and regulations needed to comply with IHR obligations and to support effective public health systems, or have laws that are outdated or poorly designed. Action to improve legal infrastructure is hindered by the inaccessibility of information about the health laws of nations, which reduces transparency and nations’ accountability for meeting their international obligations. WHO is in a position to provide leadership in improving national legal compliance, transparency and accountability, and in this paper we make the case that it is both legally appropriate and feasible for WHO to do so
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