It was somewhat disconcerting, then, to hear that a case of Ebola – a disease I thought I would only ever encounter in my nightmares - had been transmitted in Spain. That’s partly because I was there last week – in Valencia, which did in fact have an Ebola alert, thankfully false. And although every rational fibre in my body told me there was absolutely no chance I had come into contact with the disease, I’ll admit to a small moment of concern - fear can be an extremely powerful emotion that addles one's thinking, and all the more so if you have read ‘Bite’, a great thriller written by our erstwhile contributor Nick Louth which explores a frighteningly similar subject matter.
Given that I have absolutely zero experience or knowledge of the pathology of tropical diseases I will not profess to know whether the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is something we genuinely need to worry about in the West. Certainly we have not worried about it much over the last 9 months, when the latest outbreak which has now killed over 3,000 people began in Guinea.