Chasing deadly viruses for a living

Debora MacKenzie, consultant

(Image: Fred Merz/The New York Times/Redux/Eyevine)

In his new autobiography, Peter Piot shares harrowing stories about a career spent pursuing the Ebola virus and HIV

Why write an autobiography?

There is a lot that is not in scientific publications or news reports about how we got where we are in the fight against AIDS, and I wanted to tell the story while my memory is still fresh. I have lived in a whirlwind of immediate events, and never had time to reflect on what happened.

You have some amazing stories, such as when the first Ebola samples arrived in Antwerp in a broken flask inside a thermos...

There are far more regulations for handling dangerous viruses now!

... or when the Zaire government sent you into the jungle to reclaim bodies from a helicopter crash.

That was hard for me to talk about for years, but I wanted to show how, in those conditions, you have to be unorthodox. No one can help you but yourself. The students now don't believe we went into remote places without even cellphones. I hardly believe it.

The book's index is simply a list of names. Is that to give credit, or is it because people are your focus?

Both. I was often the public face of the AIDS effort, but there were lots of people on the front lines. I get a lot of satisfaction from bringing people together: as the proverb says, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, don't. I always thought of the fight against AIDS as a movement.

You describe many times when you got away from high-level meetings to see local people...

I can't cope with a life of official meetings. I'm also concerned that what I hear officially may not reflect reality. When I was discouraged, that gave me the energy I needed to face the next bureaucratic nonsense.

Last year researchers showed anti-HIV drugs could prevent infection in people without the virus. Is it the beginning of the end for AIDS?

People are still being infected with HIV faster than they are being put on treatment, so preventing new infections should be a top priority. No single intervention can stop HIV; we will always need the most effective combination for a given population. That includes treating infected people. We can now use drugs to protect against infection, but we can't let those who are infected die because they can't get treatment.

Critics say that, in Africa, so much money has gone into AIDS that other healthcare suffers.

It's a valid concern. Often there is too little data to say, but a recent study found that investment in AIDS benefited some health systems in Africa overall, and cut child death rates. Also, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is there because of AIDS, and it is the first time serious money has been ploughed into TB and malaria. It's time to create more synergies with AIDS treatment and prevention of HIV transmission from mother to child.

Do we need a new structure for global health governance?

We need changes. It didn't make sense for the global fund to support relatively prosperous countries like Argentina. Russia can easily afford all its AIDS programmes, it just won't deal with its drug abuse problem. That requires political action. It is an issue for the international community when a country doesn't want to help its most vulnerable people. Meanwhile, by 2030, Zambia will need 3 per cent of its GDP just to deal with AIDS. International support will be essential.

Why have you started working on chronic diseases like obesity?

When I left UNAIDS I asked what the big issue is now, and the conclusion was obvious: we face a tsunami of non-communicable diseases. We can learn from AIDS, as some are due to lifestyle.

We also have an obesogenic environment, with beer and Coke and cigarettes everywhere. Purists say don't deal with those companies, but we need industry: you can't feed 7 billion people with organic farming. I feel we need to make the food on the market healthy and cheap, and as I'm Belgian, also tasty.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/2128654e/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cculturelab0C20A120C0A70Cchasing0Edeadly0Eviruses0Efor0Ea0Eliving0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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