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Discoverer of Ebola Credits 'Perfect Storm' for Epidemic


In this Oct. 17, 2014 photo, Dr. Peter Piot, Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, speaks with The Associated Press at his office in London.
In this Oct. 17, 2014 photo, Dr. Peter Piot, Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, speaks with The Associated Press at his office in London.

In 1976, 27-year-old Peter Piot was working with a team of researchers who were sent two vials of blood taken from a sickened nun in what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Piot and his colleagues would go on to isolate, discover and name the Ebola virus.

Decades later, the Belgian scientist, now Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHT), credits a "perfect storm" for the current outbreak in West Africa.

Listen to Piot's story -- and his prognosis for an Ebola vaccine -- in this interview conducted by LSHT staff.

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