Coping with Public Health Emergencies of International Concern

This chapter looks at the part of international order relating to surveillance and response to public health emergencies of international concern, which in turn forms part of the broader partial international order on global health. The main actor on international health emergencies control is the World Health Organization (WHO), with the International Health Regulations (IHR) being the applicable legally binding document. Based on much older sanitary agreements, the IHR came into being in 1969. Looking in detail at the response to the major international health emergencies following the complete overhaul of the IHR in 2005—pandemic influenza declared in 2009, polio 2014, Ebola 2014, and Zika 2016—this chapter argues that the WHO has become considerably more effective over the last two decades in countering international health emergencies, and that the international order on health emergencies response is remarkably robust, having so far not shown signs of disintegration or decline.