Regulating Public Health Emergencies in Nigeria: Prospects and Constraints

Ensuring health security is considered as an important role of every sovereign nation. Every threat to health, especially the spread of communicable diseases, constitutes potential threat to human existence. As migration has become an integral part of economic and social development, various nation states face threats from infectious diseases and public health emergencies arising from unrestricted mobility of persons across national borders. The quest by states to protect the health of persons who live within their borders has galvanized an increasing level of regulatory frameworks geared at addressing issues of public health emergencies. Nigeria as an important component of the global village has put in place a number of such regulatory frameworks, the efficacy in implementation of which are constrained by both legal and ethical factors as are revealed in this work.

Keywords: Public health, emergency, disease, quarantine, law, Nigeria.