There is really nothing new on the ebola front today.

I know that Mali has yet to close its border with guinea, but I thought the Mali must have be now. I was wrong.

Mali struggles to filter passengers from Ebola-hit Guinea. Mali is another poor West African country. When I there in 1996, Mali had the 4th lowest per capita income in the world at roughly 230USD per person. Back then our party crossed the border from Guinea into Mali without even being stopped at the border. Of course that one road from Guinean bush to Malian bush is now well patrolled.

Oddly, it seems likely that our Guinean guide may have crossed into Mali on one of the forested dirt 'roads' linking the two countries.

You ask for a forested route, and the Guineans happily oblige.

That's the rub. While Mali has no reported cases of ebola, the barriers to get into the country are pretty porous.

IF the current outbreak spreads to any neighboring country, Mali, Ivory Coast, and Ghana, seem the likeliest candidates.

Ivory Coast has had cases in chimpanzees, and a primate researcher there contracted the only known human case of the Tae Forest strain of ebolavirus.

Ghana is next door and bats there have been shown to have ebola antigens. Lest you think this a new phenomenon, it is not. CDC report of 2008 on non-migratory fruit bats in Ghana.

Now here is something you might think unexpected. It is not new, but it does expand the range of filoviruses(the ebolas, and Marburg viruses).Ebola-like virus native to Europe discovered.

That brings the number of continents harboring filoviruses to three. Africa, Asia, and Europe.

I do not believe that I have used the term 'filoviruses' in this blog before. I have known the term since roughly the year 1995. As I have often stated I am not a medical or virology expert. I am simply a layperson with a promiscuous range of interests.