Pakistan, April 10 -- Pakistan has reached the point where monkeypox can no longer be treated as a passing scare: the warning signs now point to a wider public health failure that the state has seen before and still not repaired. The trigger may have come from Khairpur, where seven newborns were infected, and four died, yet the meaning of the episode reaches far beyond one district.

Ours is a country of constant movement, with workers, traders and families moving across provincial lines every day through crowded transport networks and overburdened hospitals. More worryingly, we have enough evidence from the pandemic days to realise how, once a virus enters the circulation, the old habit of passing the burden around like a hot potato beco...