| Summary: | The International Community has not always been concerned with outbreaks of communicable diseases within States. Disease was a national burden to be addressed or contained by individual States in keeping with the doctrine of territorial integrity and equality of States. However, at the end of World War II it became apparent that there was need for a global approach to the eradication of diseases. Even so, at that time, global response to public health emergencies was not necessarily developed. It was not until the outbreak of the Avian Flu and subsequently, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that the international community began to take the issue of globalized efforts to the eradication of communicable diseases seriously. These outbreaks of communicable diseases and the need for globalized efforts to combat them necessitated the renegotiation of International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR) and other ancillary Regulations and Recommendations for member States of the WHO. As a result, a pattern of response and adaptation began to emerge in the international community. This paper examines what the disposition of the international community has been towards the outbreak of contagious diseases in different regions of the World prior to the IHR. It will trace the emergence of global legal governance of communicable diseases and the compliance or otherwise of members of the international community to extant global legal governance on public health. The paper will highlight the shifts that have been made by the international community in their attitudes to healthcare emergencies and the changes made in response to particular communicable disease outbreaks. The paper proposes recommendations on what the trend may very well be in future situations in particular regions of the world.
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