{"id":1515,"date":"2014-03-24T09:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T09:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/indogomagazine.com\/indogo\/?p=1515"},"modified":"2014-03-27T00:44:02","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T00:44:02","slug":"scientist-discovered-ebola-frustrated-deadly-guinea-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/indogomagazine.com\/indogo\/scientist-discovered-ebola-frustrated-deadly-guinea-outbreak\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientist Who Discovered Ebola Is Frustrated by Deadly Guinea Outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Piot was 27, newly qualified and working in a microbiology lab in Antwerp when he received a flask of human blood contaminated with a mysterious pathogen that had been killing people in the forests of Zaire.<\/span><\/p>\n

If he’d known then what he was to discover – that inside was Ebola, one of the most lethal infectious diseases now known in humans – he would have taken more safety precautions.<\/p>\n

\"Peter<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As it was, Piot and his colleagues wore only latex gloves and white cotton lab coats as they unscrewed the top, took out its contents – vials of infected blood taken from a Flemish nun in Zaire, stored in a blue thermos flask and couriered to Belgium on a passenger plane – and began analyzing them.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking back, that was probably quite irresponsible. But we didn’t know then what we were dealing with,\u201d the now 65-year-old said in an interview from his office at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he is director.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are dangerous moments – particularly when you don’t know what you’ve got. Such blood can contain very high levels of virus,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

‘Spectacular virus’<\/strong><\/p>\n

That tale dates from Belgium in 1976, when Piot and his team became the co-discoverers of Ebola. The young Belgian scientist then went to Zaire, now Congo, in central Africa to work in the rainforests among dying villagers and missionaries to collect samples and investigate the epidemic.<\/p>\n