Peter Piot was 27, newly qualified and working in a microbiology lab in Antwerp when he received a flask of human blood contaminated with a mysterious pathogen that had been killing people in the forests of Zaire. If he'd known then what he was to discover that inside was Ebola, one of the most lethal infectious diseases now known in humans he would have taken more safety precautions.
As it was, Piot and his colleagues wore only latex gloves and white cotton lab coats as they unscrewed the top, took out its contents - vials of infected blood taken from a Flemish nun in Zaire, stored in a blue thermos flask and couriered to Belgium on a passenger plane - and began analysing them.
Ebola virus was first isolated in 1976 during outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Southern Sudan.
The name of the disease originates from the first recorded outbreak in 1976 in Yambuku Democratic Republic of the Congo which lies on the Ebola River.