Dr. Peter Piot Peter Piot, M.D., Ph.D

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Dr. Peter Piot Peter Piot, M.D., Ph.D. In the late 1970s/early 1980s, Dr Peter Piot saw an increasing number of patients from Central Africa with a uniformly fatal disease in Antwerp,Belgium. After AIDS was identified by the medical community, he traveled to Africa and conducted some of the earliest research done in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Kenya. Subsequently, he became the founding director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, known as UNAIDS, and led it through the massive task of addressing AIDS throughout the world. Under his direction, UNAIDS became the chief advocate for worldwide action against AIDS and spearheaded UN reform by bringing together ten different UN agencies in the effort. Dr. Piot, who was born in 1949 in Leuven, Belgium, received his M.D. in 1974 from the University of Ghent and a Ph.D. in microbiology in 1980 from the University of Antwerp. In 1976, he investigated an epidemic in central Africa and became the co-discoverer of the Ebola virus. From 1980-92 he served on the faculty at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp and intermittently held positions at the University of Nariobi, and the University of Washington, Seattle. He came to the United Nations in 1992 as Associate Director of the Global Programme on AIDS of the World Health Organization. Two years later he was appointed Executive Director of UNAIDS and an Under Secretary General of the United Nations. From 1991-94, he served as president of the International AIDS Society. His autobiography was published in 2012 as No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses. In January 2009, Dr. Piot resigned from UNAIDS to create an institute of global health at Imperial College London. In 2010 he was appointed Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Professor of Global Health. Transcript of Interview: Dr. Peter Piot, January 4, 2008 Download PDF | Read Interview Transcript of Interviews: Dr. Peter Piot, April 8, 2009 Download PDF | Read Interview Transcript of Interview: Dr. Peter Piot, June 16, 2010 Download PDF | Read Interview.

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New Challenges and Opportunities for Innovation Peter Piot, London
Professor Peter Piot’ Biography Baron Peter Piot KCMG MD PhD is the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and the Handa Professor of Global Health. He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations (1995-2008). A clinician and microbiologist by training, he co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976, and subsequently led pioneering research on HIV/AIDS, women’s health and infectious diseases in Africa. He has held academic positions at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp; the University of Nairobi; the University of Washington, Seattle; Imperial College London, and the College de France, Paris, and was a Senior Fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Medicine of France, and the Royal Academy of Medicine of his native Belgium, and is a fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal College of Physicians. He is a past president of the International AIDS Society and of the King Baudouin Foundation. In 1995 he was made a baron by King Albert II of Belgium, and in 2016 was awarded an honorary knighthood KCMG. Professor Piot has received numerous awards for his research and service, including the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award (2015), the Robert Koch Gold Medal (2015), the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health (2014), and the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize for Medical Research (2013), the F.Calderone Medal (2003), and was named a 2014 TIME Person of the Year (The Ebola Fighters).
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