The United States Endorses Amendments to the International Health Regulations

The United States has endorsed 1 the World Health Assembly's (WHA) adoption of amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR). 2 Based on lessons learned from the COVID-19 epidemic, the amendments are the most significant changes to global health rules in two decades. 3 Their approval comes more than two years after the United States, joined by forty other World Health Organization (WHO) member states, first proposed revisions to the IHR. 4 Congratulating the WHA delegates, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "You have strengthened the cornerstone of international health law.And in doing so, you have made the world safer." 5 Commending too the "giant step [made] toward protecting the health of humanity," Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra emphasized that the U.S. government's "first responsibility has always been to protect the lives and livelihood of the