Question

How does a country’s economics affect its ability to participate in the international effort in global surveillance?

Answer 1

Ans) The International Health Regulations adopted by the World Health Assembly represents a major development in the use of international law for public health purposes. One of the most important aspects of IHR 2005 is the establishment of a global surveillance system for public health emergencies of international concern. The assessment shows that constitutes a major advance in global surveillance from what has prevailed in the past.

- Although IHR 2005 contains some provisions that directly address these obstacles, active support by the World Health Organization and its member states is required to strengthen national and global surveillance capabilities.

- Establishing effective global public health surveillance is at the heart of IHR 2005.

- Evaluating the surveillance system specified by IHR is necessary to understand the potential for this new set of international legal rules to contribute to global health governance.

- IHR prescribed essential elements of a surveillance system and seeks to achieve the critical attributes of usefulness, sensitivity, timeliness, and stability.

- These features resonate with other aspects of IHR that make it a seminal development for global health governance.

- The task of turning the IHR vision of an effective global public health surveillance system into reality is daunting.

- Of the obstacles complicating this challenge, lack of financial resources to upgrade surveillance systems, especially in developing countries, will be the most difficult to overcome.

- IHR, public health has been given a governance regime unlike anything in the history of international law on public health.

- Turning the blueprint detailed in IHR 2005 into functional architecture that benefits all is one of the great public health challenges of the first decades of the 21st century.