Ebola
Discoverer Peter Piot: 'I Would Sit Next to an Infected Person on the Train'
The scientist who helped discover the Ebola virus has said he
would sit next to an infected patient on the London Underground and that the
outbreak in West Africa was unlikely to trigger a major global pandemic.
Professor
Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,
told AFP that a lack of trust in authorities in West Africa had contributed to
the world's largest ever outbreak of the pathogen.
The former executive director of the United Nations
HIV/AIDS programme UNAIDS said he did not believe the virus
would give rise to a major pandemic, even if an infected person flew to Europe
or the US.
"Spreading
in the population here, I'm not that worried about it," he said.
"I
wouldn't be worried to sit next to someone with Ebola virus on the Tube as long
as they don't vomit on you or something. This is an infection that requires
very close contact."
Piot
discovered Ebola in 1976, as a 27-year-old researcher working in Antwerp. He was
sent a blood sample from a Catholic nun who had died in what was then Zaire,
and is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
He later
visited Yambuku village, approximately 600 miles north of the modern-day
capital city of Kinshasa, where an epidemic had gripped the locals. The
majority of infections were among women aged between 20 and 30, centred around
a pre-natal consultation clinic.
"People
were devastated because in some villages, one in 10, one in eight people could
die from Ebola," he told AFP. "I was scared, but I was 27, so
you think you are invincible."
The virus,
they discovered, was being spread through the reuse of infected needles on
pregnant women, as well as through the funeral preparation process.
"Someone
who dies is washed, the body is laid out but you do this with bare hands.
Someone who died from Ebola, that person is covered with virus because of
vomitus, diarrhea, blood," explains Piot, adding that the same thing was
now happening in the most recent outbreak.
He said
the history of Sierra Leone and Liberia, which has seen over 224 and 130
fatalities repectively since February, was hindering efforts to tackle the
virus.
"These
countries are coming out of decades of civil war," he
said. "Liberia and Sierra Leone are now trying to reconstruct
themselves so there is a total lack of trust in authorities, and that combined
with poverty and very poor health services I think is the explanation why we
have this extensive outbreak now."
He added
that officials should test experimental vaccines on people with the virus so
that the world is prepared when it returns.
"I
think that the time is now, at least in capitals, to offer this kind of
treatment for compassionate use but also to find out if it works so that for
the next epidemic, we are ready."
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