Biosurveillance, human rights, and the zombie plague

The International Health Regulations (2005) gave the World Health Organization a central role in collecting biosurveillance data and explicitly recognized the importance of human rights for the first time. Human rights and biosurveillance have a complicated relationship with one another though. Surveillance systems are necessary in order to arrest the spread of infectious disease outbreaks, but these same surveillance systems can be used in discriminatory ways. Is some sort of resolution or detente possible? This article investigates the role of the World Health Organization in implementing these potentially competing imperatives contained within the International Health Regulations (2005). To understand this relationship, it examines how the World Health Organization would implement the International Health Regulations in case of an international zombie outbreak.