Peter Piot

From Vero - Wikipedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox scientist Sir Peter Karel, Baron Piot (born 17 February 1949)<ref name=2008-NIH-OralHistory-Part-1>Template:Cite web</ref> is a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS.

After helping discover the Ebola virus in 1976 and leading efforts to contain the first-ever recorded Ebola epidemic that same year, Piot became a pioneering researcher into AIDS. He has held key positions in the United Nations and World Health Organization involving AIDS research and management. He has also served as a professor at several universities worldwide. He is the author of 16 books and over 600 scientific articles.

Early life and education

Piot was born in Keerbergen, Belgium.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His father was a civil servant who worked with agricultural exports, and his mother ran a construction company. Piot is the oldest of two brothers and a sister.<ref name=2008-NIH-OralHistory-Part-1 />

After studying physics in the School of Engineering and Physics at Ghent University, Piot changed to medicine. During medical school, Piot received a Diploma in Tropical Medicine (DTM) from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp in Antwerp. In 1974, he received an MD degree from Ghent University.<ref name=2008-NIH-OralHistory-Part-1 /> In 1980, Piot received a PhD degree in clinical microbiology from the University of Antwerp.<ref name=2008-NIH-OralHistory-Part-1 /><ref name=LSHTM-Profile>Template:Cite web</ref>

Career

In 1976, while working at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Piot was part of a team that observed a Marburg-like virus in a sample of blood taken from a sick nun working in Zaire.<ref name=1977-Lancet-Zaire>Template:Cite journal Template:Wikidata+icon</ref><ref name=2001-Science-HIVAIDS>Template:Cite journal Template:Wikidata+icon</ref> Piot and his colleagues subsequently traveled to Zaire as part of an International Commission set up by the Government of Zaire to help quell the outbreak.<ref name=2008-NIH-OralHistory-Part-1 /> The International Commission made key discoveries into how the virus spread, and traveled from village to village, spreading information and putting the ill and those who had come into contact with them into quarantine. The epidemic was already waning when the International Commission arrived, thanks to measures taken by local and national authorities, and it finally stopped in three months, after it had killed almost 300 people.<ref name=1978-WHO-Ebola-Zaire>Template:Cite journal Template:Wikidata+icon</ref> The events were dramatised by Mike Walker on BBC Radio 4 in December 2014 in a production by David Morley. Piot narrated the programme.<ref name=2014-BBCRadio4-Ebola>Template:Cite web</ref>

Piot has received the majority of the credit for discovering Ebola, since in 1976, it was claimed he was the one to receive blood samples while working in a lab at the Institute for Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium.<ref name=LSHTM-Profile /> The samples were once claimed to be originally sent by Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, a Congolese doctor who obtained the blood samples from those sickened with a mysterious disease in then-Zaire, later discovered to be Ebola. In 2012, Piot published a memoir entitled No Time to Lose which chronicles his professional work, including the discovery of the Ebolavirus; he mentions Muyembe in passing rather than as a co-discoverer.<ref name=2013-NoTimeToLose>Template:Cite book</ref> In a 2016 Journal of Infectious Disease article, co-signed by most of the actors from that first outbreak, including Peter Piot and Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the claims by both Piot and Muyembe to have played a significant role in the early discovery of Ebola have been refuted.<ref name=2016-JID-Ebola-Discovery>Template:Cite journal Template:Wikidata+icon</ref> Piot stated in 2019 that "my book was not an attempt to write the history of Ebola, but more my personal experience".<ref name=2019-NPR-EbolaCredit>Template:Cite news</ref>

In the 1980s, Piot participated in collaborative projects in Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zaire. Project SIDA in Kinshasa, Zaire was the first international project on AIDS in Africa and is widely acknowledged as having provided the foundations of science's understanding of HIV infection in Africa. He was a professor of microbiology, and of public health at the Prince Leopold Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp, and at the University of Nairobi, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Lausanne, and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. He was also a senior fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle, a scholar in residence at the Ford Foundation, and a senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.<ref name=LSHTM-Profile />

From 1991 to 1994, Piot was president of the International AIDS Society. In 1992, he became assistant director of the World Health Organization's Global Programme on HIV/AIDS. On 12 December 1994, he was appointed executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations.<ref name=2008-Lancet-Profile>Template:Cite journal Template:Wikidata+icon</ref>

From 2009 to 2010, Piot served as director of the Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London.<ref name=LSHTM-Profile />

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

In October 2010, Piot became the director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.<ref name=2010-NIH-OralHistory-Part-3>Template:Cite web</ref>

In addition to his work at LSHTM, Piot is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, UK and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. In 2011, Amy Gutmann appointed him to serve on the International Research Panel at the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

In 2014, in the face of an unprecedented Ebola epidemic in western Africa, Piot and other scientists called for the emergency release of the experimental ZMapp vaccine for use on humans before it had undergone clinical testing on humans.<ref name="2014-LATimes-Ebola">Template:Cite news</ref> That year, he was appointed by Director General Margaret Chan to the World Health Organization's Advisory Group on the Ebola Virus Disease Response, co-chaired by Sam Zaramba and David L. Heymann.<ref name=2015-WHO-AdvisoryGroup>Template:Cite web</ref> He also chaired an independent panel convened by Harvard Global Health Institute and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine into the national and international response to the epidemic, which sharply criticised the response of the WHO and put forward ten recommendations for the body's reorganisation.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> In February 2020, he criticised the delay in declaring the 2019–20 novel coronavirus outbreak focused on Hubei, China, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and advocated a five-point scale for outbreaks, rather the current binary (emergency/no emergency) system.<ref>Template:Cite podcast</ref>

In 2020, Piot was appointed to the European Commission's advisory panel on COVID-19, co-chaired by Ursula von der Leyen and Stella Kyriakides.<ref>COVID-19: Commission launches European team of scientific experts to strengthen EU coordination and medical response European Commission, press release of 17 March 2020.</ref> In the preparations for the Global Health Summit hosted by the European Commission and the G20 in May 2021, Piot co-chaired the event's High-Level Scientific Panel.<ref>Global Health Summit: Panel of Scientific Experts European Commission.</ref>

Personal life

In May 2020, Piot disclosed that he had had COVID-19.<ref name=2020-Science-COVID>Template:Cite news</ref>

Piot is fluent in English, French, and Dutch.<ref name=LSHTM-Profile /> He is married to the American anthropologist Heidi Larson.<ref name="FT">Template:Cite web</ref>

Other activities

Awards

Honours

Selected filmography

  • 2002: Jonathan Dimbleby (TV series) – episode: "The AIDS Crisis in Africa"
  • 2006: Frontline (TV series documentary) – episode: "The Age of AIDS"
  • 2006: 60 Minutes (TV series documentary) – episode: "The New Space Race/Fighting AIDS/Immortality"
  • 2009: House of Numbers: Anatomy of an Epidemic (Documentary)
  • 2014: Horizon: Ebola: The Search for a Cure (TV series documentary)
  • 2017: Heart of the Matter (documentary short)
  • 2017: Unseen Enemy (documentary)

Selected works and publications

Template:Scholia

Selected works

Selected publications

References

Template:Reflist

Further reading

Template:Commons category

Template:Ebola Template:Calderone Prize laureates Template:Authority control

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sarg.dev/index.php?title=Peter_Piot&oldid=486433"