Scientist who identified Ebola virus calls for ‘quasi-military intervention’

London-based microbiologist Prof Peter Piot urges creation of UN peacekeeping force to fight ‘catastrophe’ in west Africa. The microbiologist who helped identify the Ebola virus in 1976 has urged David Cameron to support a “quasi-military intervention” to stop the current epidemic, which is spreading unchecked in west Africa. Professor Peter Piot, the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the outbreak was now so bad that a UN peacekeeping force ought to be mobilised in Sierra Leone and Liberia with huge donations of beds, ambulances and trucks as well as an army of clinicians, doctors and nurses. “At the moment, I’m not so optimistic, I’m pessimistic about how to control it. It’s one thing to isolate patients or put a small village or town in quarantine; it’s another thing when entire countries are affected,” he said. “This requires a state of emergency and a kind of quasi-military intervention –...