Elliot Hannon, Layth Hanbali, Susanna Lehtimaki, Nina Schwalbe: Comment. Why we still need a pandemic treaty, in. The Lancet Global Health Vol. 10 (September 2022) Issue 9, p. e1232-e1233, online in: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00278-9.
In May 2022, 194 member states of the World Health Assembly debated changes to the International Health Regulations (IHR), which are binding under international law. The Corona pandemic highlighted the limitations of the IHR reporting system. The authors address the difficulties of a) administering the IHR at the national level and b) ratifying a new agreement. They see potential in a new WHO instrument to make a difference in future disease outbreaks, but also argue that this instrument would be better moved to the higher political level of the UN General Assembly.
Link to the commentary on the ScienceDirect page
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