Any funding disparities can be addressed, but another pandemic is coming – and we’ll need the WHO to help fight it

This week, in East Sussex, a case of mpox was announced, the sixth UK case since October. New cases have also been detected recently in France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Canada and the US as mpox spreads out of Africa. Also this week, Tanzania’s president confirmed an outbreak of Marburg, an Ebola-like virus, which the country’s health minister had previously denied, only after the World Health Organization (WHO) independently reported an outbreak of nine suspected cases and eight deaths.

These two new reports of infectious diseases, thousands of miles apart, emphasise why, if a World Health Organization did not exist, it would have to be created to identify and prevent the spread of infectious diseases worldwide.

Gordon Brown was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010