The 17 Sustainability Goals of the United Nations form an international basis for measuring the action taken by countries - poor, wealth and middle income - to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. They recognise that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with adoption of strategies to build economic growth and address a range of social needs, including health, social protection and education, while tackling issues such as climate change and environmental protection.

The third of the goals relates to "Good Health and Well-Being". Amongst other things, it affirms the commitment to end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other communicable diseases by 2030 and it aims to achieve universal health coverage and provide access to safe and affordable medicines and vaccines for all.

However, it has become apparent that there is a long way to go to realise these objectives. Moreover,  the COVID-19 pandemic has impeded progress  and childhood vaccination rates have latterly suffered a significant decline and tuberculosis and malaria cases have increased as against pre-pandemic levels. Recent political developments in relation to the provision of aid and the manufacture and distribution of medications internationally may also affect the achievement of Sustainability Goal Number Three.

This paper reviews issues relating to the achievement of Sustainability Goal Number Three, including by reference to the 2025 amendments to the World Health Organisation's International Health Regulations and its 2025 Pandemic Agreement. It also reviews key international decisions by superior courts in relation to  in public health law, reflecting on the extent to which the right to health and the Sustainability Goal in respect of health are achieving progress in enhancing member States' provision of adequate health care, including in the event of another, potentially worse, pandemic.

Internationally, the world was caught significantly by surprise by COVID-19. Public authorities needed to learn many lessons but so too did the evolving discipline of public health law and how best the balance can be achieved between protection of vulnerable populations and subpopulations and respect for individual rights and liberties. The World Health Organization in 2025 has attempted to synthesise some of these lessons in the “Pandemic Treaty”.

This paper reviews key decisions by superior courts in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia,  and New Zealand to identify the trends and lessons needing to be learned by public health law. It is upon these precedents that jurisdictions will draw when the next pandemic challenges the role of government, epidemiology and clinical interventions. Internationally, diverse approaches have emerged. However, measures will need to be taken that encroach upon rights and liberties in an attempt to achieve publicly acceptable legislative and interpretative balances when global threats to health re-emerge. Again, governments will be required through laws and interpretation of laws to grapple with proportionality of responses during a time of crisis. Once more measures such as lock-downs, quarantining, curfews and impediments to freedom to movement, assembly and practice of religion will become controversial and lives will depend upon the capacity of governments, locally and internationally, to command community confidence and secure popular co-operation with measures that in ordinary circumstances would be wholly unacceptable.

This paper reflects on the role of government in public health crises and also the emerging jurisprudence on public health law to provide guidance and protection during pandemics and public health crises of international concern (PHEICS). It wrestles with competing considerations and argues that extraordinary health circumstances require extraordinary responses provided that they are time-limited, transparent and proportionate. It does so by reference to international decisions by courts that have been called upon to evaluate such issues during the course of of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only by learning from past pandemics will respion se to future pandemics be community-acceptable and efficacious.