The IHR is a legally binding instrument of international law for 196 countries, including WHO`s 194 Member States. The IHR was born out of a response to the deadly epidemics that once swept Europe. They create rights and obligations for countries, including the obligation to report public health events. The regulations also describe the criteria used to determine whether or not a particular event constitutes a “public health emergency of international concern.” Thomas, Buergenthal, International and Regional Human Rights Law and Institutions: Some Examples of Their Interaction, 12 TEX. INT`L L.J. 321, 323 (1977). However, Google Scholar texts have not clarified much about the scope of states` obligations and the nature of the right to health. See, for example, articles 1-3 of the Protocol of San Salvador, note 139 above; CHARTER OF BANJUL Art. 16, supra note 139; EUROPEAN SOCIAL CHARTER, Part 2, Article 11, EUR 1961.
Y.B. (Council of Europe) 247, 257. Moreover, it was not until 1980 that the World Bank began lending directly to the health sector. WORLD BANK, op. cit. note 17, p. 49. Other development banks, including the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, have long included health loans in development financing. Howard, op.
cit. cit., note 147, p. 342. 239 Id. at Article 24, in WHO, CORE DOCUMENTS, supra note 1, p. 8 (“The Health Assembly shall elect the members empowered to appoint a person to the Council, taking into account a balanced geographical distribution. Each of these members should appoint to the Council a person technically qualified in the field of health. ” ). While outbreaks and other acute public health risks are often unpredictable and require a range of responses, the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) provide a comprehensive legal framework that defines countries` rights and obligations in response to public health events and emergencies that may cross borders. 113 International health policy-making is discussed in Judith, Justice, The Bureaucratic Context of International Health: A Social Scientist`s View, 25 Soc. Sci.
& MED. 1301-02 (1987). Google Scholar 109 See WHO CONST, art. 2, in WHO, BASIC DOCUMENTS, supra note 1, pp. 2-3; PANNENBORG, op. cit. note 106, p. 184. Paul Basch suggests that WHO`s work can be divided into two main categories: central technical services and government services. BASCH, cited in footnote 68, p. 348.
The central technical services include epidemiological information; work towards international agreements on the health aspects of travel and trade; international standardization of vaccines and medicines; dissemination of knowledge through expert committee meetings and reports, seminars, task forces and the publication of technical and similar papers on global health issues; and coordinates the work of several hundred institutes and laboratories around the world that provide competent advice and services. Government services mainly include thousands of individual regional projects and some larger cooperative interregional programs. 19 See Claude, Robinson, Health: 200 Million, May Die Preearly in the 1990s, WHO Report, Inter Press Service, 30 April 1990Google Scholar, available in LEXIS, Nexis Library, Int`l File. According to WHO, about 1.8 million people worldwide are infected with vaccine-preventable diseases and five million die each year from diarrhoea. Id. 35 See Record Year for Cholera Cases, L.A. TIMES, January 6, 1992, p. B3. Cholera had once again become a major public health problem in Africa before the outbreak in Peru. See Lawrence K., Altman, `Catastrophic` Cholera is Sweeping Africa, N.Y. TIMES, July 23, 1991, on C2Google Scholar. By mid-1991, WHO had reported 45,000 cases of cholera in Africa, mainly in Zambia, Nigeria and Ghana.
See id. In 1992, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”) received reports from 21 countries in the Western Hemisphere of more than 339,000 cholera cases and 2321 cholera-related deaths; The number of cholera cases reported since the January 1991 outbreak was 731,312 and the total number of deaths was 6323. Update: Cholera — Western Hemisphere — 1992, 269 JAMA 1369, 1369 (1993) [hereinafter: Cholera]. 238 See WHO CONST, Article 11, reproduced in WHO, CORE DOCUMENTS, cited in footnote 1, p. 5 (`DJelegates] [members` representatives] should be chosen from among the most qualified persons by virtue of their professional competence in the field of health, preferably as representatives of the Member`s national health administration`). 67 For an analysis of the enormous increase in multilateral and bilateral assistance to the health sector over the past decade, see footnotes 147-156. 164 See Health Outlook for Alt, op. cit. cit., note 5, pp. 1-3. The increased demand for health services has further exacerbated this situation.
Id., p. 2. 210 At the regional level, the WHO European Office may be an exception. WHO/Europe has integrated the development of national legislation into the Health for All strategy. Pinet, op. cit. Cit. note 125, pp. 447-48. For an overview of the development of European health legislation, with emphasis on the national achievements needed to achieve health for HA from 1986 onwards, see id., pp. 444-50. For a complete overview of WHO/Europe`s activities in the field of health legislation up to 1986, see pages 450-51.
For all aspects of health, there are binding rules that govern the rights and obligations of governments, health workers, businesses, civil society and the population of a country.
