International Public
Health Law
Test Case: Ebola
PROF. ANN MARIE MARCIARILLE
UMKC SOL
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2014
INTERNATIONAL LAW
Today’s Goals: Introduction to International
Public Health Law
◦ Why have international public health law?
◦ World Health Organization
◦ What’s wrong with national public health law?
◦ What are the police powers of the state?
◦ Does the same analysis apply to international law?
◦ Haven’t we dealt with infectious diseases before?
◦ Cordon sanitaire
◦ Rationing of vaccines
◦ Involuntary treatment
◦ What is the Ebola virus?
◦ What is an epidemic?
◦ What is a pandemic?
◦ Is international public health law up to the challenge of Ebola?
◦ What if the Ebola virus were weaponized internationally?
◦ Is our national public health system up to the challenge of Ebola?
What Do We Actually Know About
EbolaVirus?
Is it like the disease in the 2011 movie Contagion?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdzWcrXVtwg
If not, how is it different?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flNrTPpmlB8
Ebola Can Be Difficult to Diagnose
Ebola Control Is Scary – Particularly in Cultures Where
People Are Expected to Die at Home and to Be
Prepared for Burial at Home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uozTwmuFnuA
Ebola can be carried by dead bodies, so live people and dead people and the people who have
contact with their bodily fluids are of concern.
Hasty Burial Robs the Rite of Death
HIGASHI-MATSUSHIMA, JAPAN (2011)
LIBERIA (2014)
Background Questions
Is Ebola new?
Where did this flare-up begin?
Why has this flare-up grown so large?
What does it mean for the WHO to declare an international public health emergency?
What Are Public Health Compulsory
Powers?
Surveillance
Reporting
Partner Notification
Contact Tracing
Quarantine
Involuntary Treatment
City of New York v. Antoinette R.
(NY, 1995) (Gostin,p. 420)
What did the city health commissioner seek?
Under what authority?
What is the standard that must be met?
What does it mean to have multi-drug resistant TB?
Can TB ever be “cured”?
Who Remembers Attorney Andrew
Speaker (2007)? (Goslin, p. 429)
World Health Organization
What are the International Health Regulations? (Gosling, p. 246)
◦ Are they focused on borders: entry and exit?
◦ Are they focused on surveillance and response capacities internal to a country?
◦ What authority do they give the WHO? (Goslin, p. 251)
Are they self-activating? Aspirational?
With 20-20 Hindsight, What Will the World Think
of Our Treatment of This Ebola Flare-Up?
Because Ebola is Not One Disease, But Rather One Disease With
Multiple Strains, Multiple Outbreaks, and Multiple Host Environments
(JV Chamary, 2014)