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The best defense is a good offense, especially when it comes to the immune system. The troops that respond to an infection are split into two squadrons, and, until recently, it seemed that the two were independent, without much interaction. Now, in a paper published this week in Nature Immunology, a team of scientists from the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute and the University of Alabama at Birmingham say that the immunology boot camp is more communication-intensive than initially thought - a discovery that could help efforts to produce more effective vaccines.

Madira Lefa, assistant physician at Kagadi Hospital in Uganda, cried when he read what was going on in Liberia, one of the three countries most seriously affected by the Ebola outbreak. Immediately he started thinking, “I have to help my colleagues”. Madira is one of 14 Ugandan medical doctors and healthcare workers now working in the Ebola treatment centre in JFK Hospital in Monrovia, having been deployed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Excuse me, sir, I need to take your temperature.” These words are often overheard these days at the international airport of Monrovia, where a group of doctors and nurses from the Ministry of Health of Liberia screen passengers arriving and leaving the country for Ebola.