It is still uncertain whether this sovereign concern will trump the provision of global public good for health. Nevertheless, in a highly globalizing world, infectious diseases know no border. While China is seeking to adhere as much as possible to the underlying norms and rules of global health governance (and sometimes even applies them to their extremes), as evidenced by its handling of the recent swine flu outbreak, the major step forward is perhaps to reframe health as a global public good that is available to each and every individual of the world, rather than merely as an issue of concern to nation-states. Electron Tomography Reveals the Steps in Filovirus Budding The filoviruses, Marburg and Ebola, are non-segmented negative-strand RNA viruses causing severe hemorrhagic fever with high mortality rates in humans and nonhuman primates. The sequence of events that leads to release of filovirus particles from cells is poorly understood. Two contrasting mechanisms have been proposed, one proceeding via a “submarine-like” budding with the helical nucleocapsid emerging parallel to the plasma membrane, and the other via perpendicular “rocket-like” protrusion. Here we have infected cells with Marburg virus under BSL-4 containment conditions, and reconstructed the sequence of steps in the budding process in three dimensions using electron tomography of plastic-embedded cells. We find that highly infectious filamentous particles are released at early stages in infection. Budding proceeds via lateral association of intracellular nucleocapsid along its whole length with the plasma membrane, followed by rapid envelopment initiated at one end of the nucleocapsid, leading to a protruding intermediate. Scission results in local membrane instability at the rear of the virus. After prolonged infection, increased vesiculation of the plasma membrane correlates with changes in shape and infectivity of released viruses. Our observations demonstrate a cellular determinant of virus shape. They reconcile the contrasting models of filovirus budding and allow us to describe the sequence of events taking place during budding and release of Marburg virus. We propose that this represents a general sequence of events also followed by other filamentous and rod-shaped viruses. Marburg virus (MARV) and Ebola virus, the two genera in the family Filoviridae, cause fulminant hemorrhagic disease in humans and nonhuman primates, resulting in high mortality rates [1, 2, 3] . Outbreaks of MARV disease in sub-Saharan Africa underline the emerging potential of this virus, which is classified as a highest-priority bioterrorism agent by the Centre for Disease Control [4, 5, 6, 7, 8] .