Peter Piot

Dr. Peter Piot (born 1949 in Leuven, Belgium) is Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN specialized agency UNAIDS. In 2004, he was awarded the Vlerick Award.

From UNAIDS.org Bio: Executive Director of UNAIDS since its creation in 1995 and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr Peter Piot comes from a distinguished academic and scientific career focusing on AIDS and women’s health in the developing world.

Drawing on his skills as a scientist, manager and activist, Dr Piot has challenged world leaders to view AIDS in the context of social and economic development as well as security.

Under his leadership, UNAIDS has become the chief advocate for worldwide action against AIDS. It has brought together ten organizations of the United Nations system around a common agenda on AIDS, spearheading UN reform.

Dr Piot earned a medical degree from the University of Ghent, a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and was a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle. After graduating from medical school, Dr Piot co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976.

In the 1980s Dr Piot launched and expanded a series of collaborative projects in Africa - in Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania and Zaire. Projet SIDA in Kinshasa, Zaire, was the first international project on AIDS in Africa and is widely acknowledged as having provided the foundations of our understanding of HIV infection in Africa. He was a professor of microbiology, and of public health at the Prince Leopold Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp, and the Universities of Nairobi, Brussels and Lausanne.

In 1992, Dr Piot joined the Global Programme on AIDS of the World Health Organization, in Geneva, as Associate Director.

Born in 1949 in Belgium, Dr Piot is fluent in three languages and is the author of 16 books and more than 500 scientific articles. He has received numerous awards for scientific and societal achievement, and was knighted as a Baron by King Albert II of Belgium in 1995. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, UK.

 Quote, World AIDS Day 2006:'' "The latest global AIDS figures give us reason for concern and for some hope. The number of new infections rose to 4.3 million this year, at the same time 2.9 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses. Multi-drug and extremely drug resistant tuberculosis highlight new challenges in our collective response read more"

 Quote, 2006:''

"'On current trends, AIDS will kill tens of millions of people over the next 20 years. But this need not happen. We know prevention works. We know that HIV treatment and care work. The global AIDS response is poised to enter a new era: where leadership and commitment are at long last matched with the resources needed to get on with the job.'"