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Health

I was there at Ebola's bloody beginning

Forty years ago, Peter Piot raced to the scene of an outbreak of an unknown deadly disease. What he discovered gave him his life's purpose

By Tiffany O'Callaghan

20 July 2016

Peter Piot

Peter Piot: A life’s work

Bryan Schutmaat

WE DIDN’T know it would be in a Thermos flask, but we were warned by telex that a sample would be arriving from Zaire. It was blood from a nun who had died from a mysterious disease. Was it yellow fever? Something else?

The nun worked at a mission hospital in the north of the country, but had been evacuated to the capital Kinshasa before she died. Her doctor put the samples in a small blue Thermos – the kind people use for coffee – and…

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