Renaud Piarroux

Renaud Piarroux
Renaud Piarroux
Born	(1960-09-29) September 29, 1960
Nationality	French
Education	MA, University of Montpellier, 1989 Pediatric Residency, 1990 Infectious Disease Residency, 1993 PhD Microbiology & Cellular Biology,University of Aix-Marseille, 1995^[1] Habilitation à diriger les recherches (research doctorate),University of Aix-Marseille, 1996^[2]
Spouse	Martine Piarroux

Renaud Piarroux is a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and tropical medicine. Since 2008, he is a Full Professor of Parasitology and Mycology at the University of Aix-Marseille in Marseille, France and Head of Parasitology and Mycology at Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille in Marseilles.^[3] Over the years, Piarroux took part in several missions and research projects in Africa, including the study of the dynamics of cholera epidemics in Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo^[4] ^[5] ^[6] ^[7] ^[8] ^[9] and Guinea,^[10] prevention and management of parasitic diseases in Morocco, and a program to fight against waterborne diseases in Ivory Coast.^[11]^[12]

Piarroux has been the Regional Representative of the Franche-Comté region of France and responsible for various missions with Médecins du Monde (MDM) (Doctors of the World) in Grand Comoros^[13] and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He also worked on the analysis of risks of epidemics and assessing health priorities after natural disasters and conflicts including:

Zaire (later Democratic Republic of Congo), 1994 and on-going since 2002^[14]^[15]
Herat, Afghanistan, 1995
Honduras, 1998
Haiti, (see below)

In these risk analyses he studied how cholera spreads through regions and communities.

In November 2010 he was called in by the Haitian government and French Embassy to investigate the origin and course of the world’s largest cholera epidemic of recent times, ^[16] ^[17] ^[18] ^[19] ^[20] ^[21] ^[22] and to assist authorities in creating an effective control program. These activities and their accomplishments were highlighted in the book Deadly River (Cornell University Press, 2016), authored by Ralph R. Frerichs.^[23]

Piarroux is an on-going member of the travel-related and imported diseases committee of the French Ministry of Health.^[24] He is a founding member of the Global Alliance Against Cholera (GAAC), started in the eastern part of DR Congo, that has since expanded to other cholera-affected countries.^[25]

Life and career

Renaud Piarroux was born on September 27, 1960 in Cherbourg, France, the son of painter Jean Piarroux and medical pathologist Marie-Claude Deleval. The family moved to Paris, where his mother joined the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)– French Institute of Health and Medical Research. Later he served in Corsica as paratrooper in the French Air Force, 1981-82.

He completed his PhD in Microbiology and Cellular Biology from University of Aix-Marseille in 1995 Title:Isolement et caractérisation d'une séquence répétée des Leishmania de l'ancien monde : Application au diagnostic, à l'épidémiologie et à la taxonomie^[26] and his Habilitation à diriger les recherches (research doctorate) from University of Aix-Marseille, in 1996.^[27]

His professional employment started in 1991 as pediatrician in Basse-Terre hospital, in the Leeward Island of Guadeloupe. Then while working on his doctoral dissertation, he was both a research associate in the genetics department of Aix-Marseille University and pediatrician at La Timone University Hospital , Marseilles. Following graduation, he became Assistant Professor of Parasitology at Besançon University Hospital, where he created the Parasitology-Mycology Department and became a Full Professor in 2001. He was director of Santé et Environnement Rural Franche-Comté, and the EA2276 research team at Franche-Comté University from 2004 to 2007.^[28]^[29]

In Besançon, his academic publication subjects included: Farmer's lung, the relationship between mold and asthma, unhealthy dwellings, cholera, echinococcosis (a local parasitic disease). Following a move in 2008 to Marseille, his worked focused on three subjects:^[30]

Creating and evaluating diagnosis tools in parasitology and mycology and their consequences on patient management (especially microsatellites,^[31] and MALDI-TOF analysis)
Epidemiology of parasitic and tropical diseases, (especially leishmaniasis, cholera and malaria, with special interest in characterizing how molecular or genetic specificities evolve in time and space)^[32]
Environmental moist exposure and health consequences (especially mold and unhealthy dwellings, moist and reanimation departments)^[33]^[34]

His interest in cholera epidemics started in 1994 while working as a volunteer pediatrician in Goma, Zaire during an extensive cholera outbreak following the Rwandan genocide. He next encountered cholera while working with MDM in Grand Comorro in 1998.^[35] There, he created a surveillance system that with rapid follow-up and simple interventions eventually brought the outbreak under control.

Piarroux next helped in defining cholera control priorities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, with the help of a local epidemiologist, who became his student, Dr. Didier Bompangue.^[36] They observed that cholera regularly came back from the lake area in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.^[37]^[38] He enlarged his study in time and space, first to the neighboring countries and then to yet more African countries. He observed that only a few towns play the role of amplifier.^[39] While cholera seemed linked to climate, the disease was most definitely linked to human mobility.^[40] He decided to try genetic analysis (as he had formerly done with echinococcosis) in order to track the movements of vibrios at a larger scale.^[41]

In 2010 Piarroux was asked by the French government to investigate the Haiti cholera epidemic; questions arose in the scientific community as Haiti had never been hit by cholera before.^[42] His investigation led to the controversial conclusion^[43] that the epidemic was imported by United Nations soldiers in a Nepalese UN peacekeeping camp near Mirebalais in the center of Haiti.^[44] His findings ran counter to the more popular Haitian environmental cholera paradigm.^[45] Pr Rita Colwell, the main proponent of the environmental theory, postulated it was a "perfect storm" of three converging factors, an earthquake followed by a hot summer and then a Hurricane that triggered the explosive epidemic.^[46] Piarroux agreed that some vibrios are living in coastal waters, but argued that in Haiti (as in Democratic Republic of Congo), cholera didn’t come ex nihilo from coastal water,^[47]^[48]^[49]^[50] and further that the storm came after the epidemics had started.^[51] Other scientists demonstrated that the cholera in Haiti originated from Nepal.^[52]^[53] Human mobility was thus key to disease transmission in Haiti.^[54] This was important information for formulating an effective elimination strategy. Details of the political and scientific controversies are presented in Deadly River by Ralph R. Frerichs (Cornell University Press, 2016).

Piarroux has three adult children, Raphael, Julie and Loïc, and is married to Martine Piarroux. The couple resides in Marseilles.

References

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