Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), has been working on the international fight against HIV/AIDS for 14 years. Before UNAIDS was formed in 1996, he was responsible for AIDS research and development activities at WHO. Formerly, at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp (Belgium), Dr. Piot established a group devoted to research, training and technical cooperation on the disease and on reproductive health. He was among the first to document a number of important aspects of the epidemic in developing countries and co-launched Projet SIDA in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo), the first international HIV/AIDS project in the developing world. He was also a co-discoverer of the Ebola virus in 1976. 
 
 
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