Featured Article: International Health Regulations (February 12th, 2024)

Congressional Communities is featuring one Congressional Research Service (CRS) article per day in effort to share with our readers the wealth of information that the CRS makes readily available.

Today’s featured CRS article, “U.S. Proposals to Amend the International Health Regulations,” addresses proposed changes to the International Health Regulations, which are a set of recognized rules that international parties agree to be held to in order to stop the spread of infectious diseases. This article falls under the issue areas of Health and International Affairs. From the CRS:

Since 1980, outbreaks of new and long-standing infectious diseases have been occurring with greater frequency and causing higher numbers of human infections. The World Health Assembly (WHA), the governing body of the World Health Organization (WHO), has occasionally amended a long-standing set of rules called the International Health Regulations (IHR) to address this growing global threat. In January 2022, the United States introduced amendments to the Regulations that sought to broaden the ways in which WHO could respond to public health threats and increase the pace of such responses. Congressional deliberations of these amendments focused on the potential implications of implementation and whether adoption of the amendments would require congressional consent since the United States consented to be legally bound by the Regulations through an executive agreement. This In Focus addresses common questions regarding the IHR, including the role of Congress and the status of U.S.-proposed amendments to the Regulations.

Interested readers can find the full article here.