On the Legitimacy and Effectivity of the World Bank and Its Pandenic Emergency Financing Facility (‘PEF’) at the Time of the covid-19 Outbreak

Pandemic financing has in the current climate of disruption and turmoil of an ongoing global pandemic become the most highly debated and controversial issue within the field of international public health law and policy. From the perspective of international public health law and policy, a precondition for success is that financial resources and funds are employed in an effective manner. Whether the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (‘World Bank’ or ‘WB’) and the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (‘PEF’) – a financing mechanism housed at the WB – may be perceived as effective public health players shall be established by referring to their mandates, their inherent capacity for enhancing accepted global legal standards and rules on public health and their funding methods and practices. After the affirmation and consolidation of its role in the public health sector in the early 1990s, the WB has rapidly accredited itself as the most active intergovernmental institution dealing with pandemic and epidemic financing. Its direct involvement in public health trust funds, such as the Avian Flu Trust Fund Facility and the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Multi-Donor Fund (the HEPRF), and its lending practices and internal policies and procedures were of crucial significance in this respect. Considering that acceptance of international institutions, including international financial institutions, has always been conditioned by their acknowledgment as legally legitimate, legitimacy is regarded as closely connected to effectiveness. The criteria for establishing legitimacy in relation to international financial institutions are increasingly, amongst others, the respect and promotion of rule of law standards in the recipient states. From this perspective, the WB’s functional and management structures, but not the PEF’s structures and management, have made noteworthy progress, and notwithstanding some deficiencies and peculiarities they present several elements of legitimate decision-making.

Research on the Innovation of Public Health Law Education under the Background of Free Trade Port Construction

In 2020, “Overall Scheme of Hainan Free Trade Port Construction” emphasized that Hainan should focus on developing modern service industry represented by medical and educational fields. In this context, the public health law education in Hainan, as a representative course integrating the dual characteristics of 'medical' and 'education', should also keep pace with the times to better meet the practical needs of the construction of Hainan free trade port. Through the extensive and in-depth investigation of five hospitals, two courts and five universities randomly selected in Hainan Province, and the analysis of 815 effective questionnaires collected by SPSS statistical method to form a survey database, the key and difficult points that need to be broken through in the innovation of Public Health Law education under the background of the construction of Hainan Free Trade Port are systematically summarized, and the scientific structure of strategic discipline orientation to improve the attention of Health Law, the adoption of immersion-type Health Law teaching methods.

Too Important for the Bureaucrats: Rethinking Risk and Regulatory Presumptions in Times of Crisis

The posture of American regulation of medicine is negative—we assume that a new drug is unsafe and ineffective until it is proven safe and effective.1 This regulatory posture is a heuristic normative principle, a specific instance of the so-called precautionary principle in public health law.2 It is defensible, if debatable, in many ordinary circumstances.3 But like many normative heuristics, this negative posture may compel suboptimal decision-making in emergencies, where context-specific decisions must be made and a range of unique values may apply.