A Critical Appraisal of the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (2005) in Times of Pandemic: It Is Time for Revision

The UN World Health Organisation (WHO) is the most important international actor when it comes to coordination in the fight against contagious diseases.This article presents the International Health Regulations (2005) which constitute the WHO's legal basis for coordinating the work to counter epidemics, it identifies serious weaknesses in the International Health Regulations (2005), and it points to solutions for remedying these weaknesses.The article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic provides a warning bell that is too loud to be ignored, and that this warning bell reminds us that it is high time to prepare ourselves against those transmittable diseases that will hit us in the future.In this respect we must ensure that the WHO is much better equipped to lead this fight than what is the case today. I. EPIDEMICS ARE UNAVOIDABLE -AND DANGEROUSIn 2010, when the world was hit by the so-called swine flu epidemic, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and philanthropist, wrote: Hopefully this outbreak will serve as a wakeup call to get us to invest in better capabilities, because more epidemics will come in the decades ahead and there is no guarantee we will be lucky next time.The 1918 flu killed more than 50 million people. 1 Every year, the US Intelligence Community provides a Worldwide Threat Assessment.