Another worldwide alert – mpox is spreading. Here are three steps we can take to head it off | Gordon Brown

The rich world often waits too long to intervene. There's no doubt we have ways to keep everyone safe, if we have the will

• Gordon Brown is the former UK prime minister and a World Health Organization ambassador

Just a little over a year since declaring that Covid-19 was no longer a public health emergency of international concern and that the 2022-23 mpox crisis had subsided, the World Health Organization finds itself warning of another crisis as cases of yet another new strain of the mpox virus spread from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to other countries in Africa and beyond.

On Thursday the WHO's director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was in the DRC reviewing the situation on the ground as the organisation issued an emergency appeal to fund a 102m ($135m) mpox global strategic preparedness and response plan to stem transmission.