MALI thought it had got off lightly. As the Ebola epidemic claimed thousands of lives across the border to the south in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, Mali recorded just a single case of the virus. It was carried by an infected two-year-old girl, who had been brought by her grandmother from Guinea, travelling 1,200km (745 miles) by bus and taxi with the feverish child. She died in hospital in the city of Kayes on October 24th