by Peter Piot. (Find the Book)Belgian physician Piot has been on the front lines of infectious disease research for the last three and one-half decades, and he details the battle against Ebola and AIDS in his timely and accessible memoir. In 1976, Piot and his colleagues received a blood sample from Kinshasa, Zaire, taken from a patient suffering from a new, terrifying syndrome. Though the virulent disease, christened Ebola after a nearby river, flamed out quickly due to its high mortality rate, Piot was saddened to discover that unsanitary conditions in the missionary hospital operated by Flemish nuns contributed to its spread. Piot next turned his attention to sexually transmitted diseases in Africa, a specialty that put him in a key position when the world witnessed the rise of a deadly virus that attacks the immune system. As new AIDS cases cropped up in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa, sprung from unprotected sex, blood transfusions, and intravenous-drug use, Piot realized that there was not going to be one AIDS epidemic in the world but many different ones, depending on behavior and culture, and that any kinds of solutions . . . were going to have to be tailor-made. Piot's race to make a difference in the face of this overwhelming epidemic makes for enthralling reading, and his determination, efforts, and accomplishments are inspiring. --Booklist
