How Prepared are We for the Next Big Global Epidemic?

In 1976 Peter Piot was a 27-year-old microbiologist working in Belgium when he travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo, then called Zaire, to investigate a particularly deadly disease outbreak. He took samples back to his lab and was among the team that first discovered the ebola virus.

Today, he is one of the world's leading experts on epidemics a…