Video Listing
Michael Gould
HIV Positive Male Nurse
Perhaps I knew fifty people who died by the end of the eighties. I was in my mid- thirties going through what octogenarian grandparents experience when all their friends die and they’re the last.
Mark Ward
Haemophiliac, Activist & HIV Positive
When I walked into a club, I wasn’t Mark the haemophiliac, I wasn’t Mark the AIDS victim, I was the Mark party animal.
Ash Kotak
Film Maker, Long Term Survivor & Founder AIDS Memory
We have to take collective responsibility for the job that is not finished. The job started in 1982. The job is to end AIDS, and the stigma surrounding it.
Gill Brigg
Friend & Carer
I took one look at Vaughn and part of me broke. His clothes were on inside out. He had bits of wool and string tied in circles around him, and a tape measure. Things to ‘keep him safe’. His mind was disturbed.
Robert Ely
Activist & HIV Positive
I don’t have any holidays, I don’t have a car, I don’t do anything out of the ordinary these days, apart from survive, and that is worrying
Kevin Kelland
Long Term Survivor & Activist
He’d been moved to a respite home which was really for elderly people. It was full of prejudice and bigotry. Some nurses wouldn’t touch him. He went through hell before he died.
Andrew Keates
Theatre Director, Advocate & HIV Positive
The biggest obstacle for people with HIV isn't the virus. It's what everyone around them is saying and thinking
Dr Rupert Whitaker
THT Founder, Pioneer & HIV Activist
A major issue…is that neither social nor mental issues are addressed adequately by clinics
Rebecca de Havilland
Long Term Survivor, Trans Woman & Activist
They told me I couldn't have the operation and I maybe had two years to live
Krishen Samuel
HIV Adocate & HIV Positive
All those who came before me, that is part of my story
Barbara von Baresewisch
Specialist HIV Nurse
Nurses are important to patients, but the reverse is also true - we remember patients and are shaped by them
Adrienne Seed
Artist HIV Positive Long Term Survivor
Roughly half the people infected with HIV throughout the world are women!
Flick Thorley
HIV Specialist Nurse, Advocate & Lesbian
Many of my colleagues, male and female, were gay themselves, as I am, and this helped drive through change quickly
Dr Graeme Moyle
HIV Specialist Doctor
HIV brought about a reinvention in medicine
Richard Leaf
Advocate & Lighthouse Volunteer
The thing we can all do is the thing right in front of us, to hold out our hand to the next person who needs help
Arnold Gordon
Activist & Founder of Blackliners
There was a huge appetite among young, gay, black men for what we could do to help them
Jane Bruton
Nursing Pioneer, Clinical Research Manager
When there is no cure, all you can do is care
Kelly Hunter MBE
HIV Activist & Actor
We had the whole cast of East Enders pulling pints in the pubs, Boy George in the Rock Garden, Jonathan Ross in Paul Smith’s clothes shop, Kate Bush was there, Harry Enfield…
Lord Norman Fowler
Politician, Leader of ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance Campaign’
There were some who believed this was not a public health issue but one of public morality
Alan Burgess
Long Term Survivor, & Haemophiliac
I tried not to let haemophilia get in the way of anything I wanted to do
Janet Green
Advocate & THT Pioneer
AIDS brought together gay and lesbian communities in a way not seen previously
Sir Nick Partridge
THT Pioneer & Activist
The commitment of staff and volunteers was extraordinary
Prof Jane Anderson
Female Consultant Physician
Other questions began to emerge. What if a woman were pregnant? Could she safely have children?
Winnie Sseruma
Long Term Survivor & Activist
I saw it as my role to support others living with HIV, especially those in the black African community
Jonathan Blake
Long Term Survivor & Activist
The more we can see people with HIV as normal, leading positive lives, the more we remove stigma
David Eason
Long Term Survivor
One of the greatest tragedies of HIV is that instead of treating it as a catastrophic medical pandemic, the rest of the world treated it as a moral issue
George Hodson
Long Term Survivor & Warrior Queen
The day you get your diagnosis is like a personal earthquake
Julian Hows
Long Term Survivor & Activist
Having just gone through the decriminalisation of homosexuality 15 years before, there were a number of groups and organisations coming together. We were in a very good position in some ways to actually create a community response.
Justin Melican
Buddy
Some people were that frank though - I mean people used tattoo it on themselves, used to have 'HIV positive' on their chests and stuff.
Fred M
Long Term Survivor
Trying to fight a pandemic in a gay relationship, when it’s actually illegal to be with the person you’re trying to save, is not something I would wish on anybody.
John Meuret
Long Term Survivor & Ex Drag Queen
We did raise a lot of money, you know. And it was all out of people’s pockets
Frankie O’Reilly
Long Term Survivor & Ex Drag Queen
We came to London to give each other freedom, to enjoy ourselves. We’d had that. And now we both had our diagnoses.
Prof Robert Miller
Specialist HIV Doctor
Patients didn’t blindly follow what either I said, or the rest of the team said. And I think we were decades ahead of the rest of the health service in that regard.
Leigh Neal
Long Term Survivor & Ex Drug Addict
In my first group I said, ‘I’m Leigh. I’m an addict and I’m HIV positive, so you can all leave the room now.’ Instead, they hugged me.
Barbara Hedge
Psychologist & HIV Advocate
Every so often somebody would arrive in an ambulance from another part of the country with people dressed in space suits to bring them in. Stigma was prevalent beyond the four walls of the ward.
Hatta Hodson
Mother of HIV Positive Son
My private crusade has been to find other parents like me, because while the secrecy goes on, so does the stigma.
Ruth Phypers
Buddy & Advocate
The report appeared in the News of the World: Sex and Drugs on AIDS Training Weekend. Suddenly we were all under the spotlight and it wasn’t fair. Volunteers had put in so much.
Mel R
Mother & Long Term Survivor
We were both tested. There was no concern on my part. I was doing it to encourage him. I knew my sexual history, so I knew that I was going to be ok.
Emma Cole
Educationalist & Long Term Survivor
It’s not about ‘good’ people with HIV, and ‘bad’ people. An illness doesn’t know who you are when it infects you.
Helen Nicholson
Advocate & Friend to HIV Positive Men
But it was splashed across the media: 'Should we allow our future queen to shake hands with an AIDS victim?' All this bile. Bile about Shane.
Theresa Burns
Specialist HIV Nurse
If we don’t learn from those days how ignorance and fear, and misinformation can damage a whole community of normal, everyday folk, then we’ve learned nothing.
Jo Manchester
Long Term Survivor & Activist
My GP said, "There’s only one way to tell you this. You’ve got AIDS. You’ve probably got 5 years to live. If you’re in an accident, be careful with your blood. Don’t get pregnant."
Diana Aldam
Specialist HIV Nurse
Little did we know how long it would take before there were really effective medications and, at that point, we didn’t know how important continuing to take medication was.
Barbara Hathaway & Denise
Mother of HIV Positive Daughter
In London by that time, the perception was that it affected only gay men, nothing to do with women.
Ali Carruth
Specialist HIV Nurse
And I said to him: Is there anything that you want to do before you die? And he said: Yeah, I want to go back on a motorbike. And I said: OK, I can make that happen!