Statutory Power of WHO and Its Suggestions for Improvement Under Public Health Emergency

Abstract

WHO has taken a series of measures against the COVID-19, but they have been questioned by many parties, which is related to the marginalization of WHO as an international organization. This paper takes WHO’s authority and behaviors under public health emergencies as the research object, and uses the methods of literature research and case study to explore the reasons why WHO has faded from the world public health authority from three aspects: WHO’s international status, the effectiveness of relevant international agreements, and relevant cases in the past. At the same time, sort out emergency response behaviors and analyze the rationality of WHO’s behaviors during the epidemic. On this basis, the article puts forward the following suggestions, including: Member States should respect the role of WHO in health emergencies, WHO itself should also standardize the election mechanism of functional departments, implementation procedures of related agreements and other systems, and reform the funding structure model. In the future, WHO can cooperate with non-official organizations to expand data collection channels, and its international agreements can also be linked with the domestic laws of sovereign countries, and the two can coordinate public health incidents.