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Key step forward on International Health Rules

The global health community has taken a key step towards ensuring rapid action against future outbreaks of infectious diseases and other threats to international public health. A resolution adopted today confirms and underlines the World Health Organization’s (WHO) authority to verify disease outbreaks from all available official and unofficial sources, and, when necessary to determine the severity of an outbreak through on-the-spot investigations to ensure it is appropriately controlled.

The resolution is a major step in the ongoing revision of the International Health Regulations, which were first published in 1969.…