Recommendations for Strengthening Global Health Security: Empowering the World Health Organization and Realizing the Potential of the International Health Regulations

The announcement last month that the World Health Organization (WHO) had begun the process of electing its next Director-General could mark renewed effort to strengthen the enforcement of the International Health Regulations (IHR). In a new Early View Milbank Quarterly study, Lawrence O. Gostin, of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health, Georgetown University Law Center, and Rebecca Katz, of George Washington University, present a clear and comprehensive description of the IHR, evaluate recent global commission reports evaluating them, and offer proposals for fundamental reform and strengthening of the IHR, particularly for strong national health system core capacities.