The International Health Regulations in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Epidemics have always evoked political responses. As early as the fourteenth century, for example, city states established crude lazarettos, quarantine facilities for isolating sick passengers and sanitizing ships and goods. However, three major developments required that these initial efforts be modified: the growing number of pandemics, the consolidation of the nation-state as an actor capable of addressing the problem, and progress in medical science. As plague, cholera and yellow fever threatened Europe in subsequent periods, states scrambled to develop measures aimed at preventing their spread. They fashioned an International Sanitary Convention in 1903 which was frequently revised in the following decades. The World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR), the modern version of this early agreement, are now again being altered in the face of changing epidemiological realities. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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