Peter Piot, a Belgian physician and microbiologist, co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire, in 1976, and led research on HIV/AIDS and women’s health in Africa. He was the first Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) from 1995 to 2008. A former associate professor at the Collège de France, he is currently Director of the Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London.

This book is the testimony of a major player in the fight against AIDS. For fourteen years, as Executive Director of UNAIDS, Peter Piot met heads of State, C.E.O.s of major pharmaceutical companies, leaders of associations of AIDS victims, researchers, etc. He united existing forces, overcame resistance, combated prejudice and championed the right to treatment for the world’s poorer inhabitants.
He summarises here every aspect of the AIDS epidemic, over the long term and on a global scale. Notably, he demonstrates how AIDS impacted both national and global health policies and how it transformed the way major epidemics are dealt with.
This book is also an appeal for a global approach to AIDS, based on scientific research and grounded in human rights.

• The personal and authoritative point of view of an internationally celebrated scientist who is also a major player in the global fight against AIDS.
• This book gives us the latest information on the global development of the epidemic, the outcome of existing treatments, and the social and political problems posed by the epidemic.