A 28-year-old woman died in Russia last week and, since then, speculations about the case have ricocheted around the globe. The woman was a lab technician at a Russian research institute that studies the plague. As unverified rumors have circulated that she may have contracted the disease from a lab leak, President Trump, the World Health Organization and other leaders are asking for more information.
Russia has insisted this is not a health emergency and stated that its health authorities have not found dangerous pathogens in any of the deceased woman's contacts. But there are still far more questions than answers. That uncertainty has global leaders and health experts turning to a law that obligates countries, including Russia, to share exactly this type of information.
It's called the International Health Regulations or IHR. On Wednesday, at a WHO press conference, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus invoked IHR as the best way to determine current situation in Russia and determine the appropriate response. "We don't yet have the full picture of this event," he said.
"Timely, complete and transparent information sharing under the international regulations is essential to clarify conflicting reports and enable an accurate assessment of potential public health risks." Here are the key things to know about the IHR and how it applies in today's world. This law requires countries to share health information that could have international implications. It goes way back to the 1850s with cholera outbreaks in Europe, which led to the creation of guidelines for sharing disease information.
"That's very, very long for international law," says Alexandra Phelan, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "Look at the negotiation documents and they're debating: Is cholera caused by a bacteria or miasma [a bad smell]? Like we're really right in the middle of germ theory." Then, when WHO was founded in 1948, these regulations — then called the International Sanitary Regulations — were adopted.
That was one of the organization's first moves. The law has since been amended and updated, most notably after the SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in 2003 and most recently due to COVID-19 pandemic. A country is supposed to notify WHO if the health event has the potential to cause an international health emergency.
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