Smithsonian Magazine | July 26, 2022
The aim of the designation is to prompt countries to invest more in preventing the spread of the disease and to share resources as part of a coordinated international response, per the Times. “Declaring a PHEIC makes governments and the global public sit up and take notice,” Lawrence Gostin, a global health policy expert at the Georgetown University Law Center, told ScienceInsider. “It raises the political stakes for government leaders, and it raises the level of accountability for them to act.”