The 4th July 2002 marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Terry Higgins, the first person recognised to have died of AIDS in the UK.
To commemorate Terry’s death, his then partner, Rupert Whitaker, and the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Milburn MP, unveiled a plaque in St Thomas’s Hospital, London where Terry died.
It seems logical that St Thomas’s should be the site for a physical memory to Terry’s death. However, in 1982, Terry, his partner and friends were treated with such a lack of compassion, indifference and homophobia, that the Terry Higgins Trust was founded within weeks of Terry's death to campaign for better understanding of the still unnamed condition now known as AIDS.
Today the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) is one of the best known charities in the UK and the largest HIV voluntary organisation in Europe. The esteem in which it is held was demonstrated at the plaque unveiling by the reading of a personal message of support from Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Important as political recognition is, the real achievement of THT is the impact it has had on the day-to-day lives of people at risk of, or living with, HIV and AIDS.
The visibility and self-confidence of gay men in the UK today would have been unimaginable to many gay men like Terry Higgins in 1982. Homophobia was widespread and prominent in politics, the media and medicine. Five years before the first official government HIV awareness campaign, THT was providing HIV prevention information to gay men; material which was respected around the world for its calm, factual approach, but scrutinised by the Metropolitan Police for obscenity and condemned by “family values” campaigners in the then ruling Conservative Party.
Throughout its history, THT has been a tireless campaigner for the rights and equality of the communities most affected by HIV, most notably as a prominent advocate for the repeal of legislation which discriminates against gay men, and more recently, speaking out against the dispersal of asylum seekers.
NAM's dedication to providing, honest, factual, easy-to-understand HIV information has been shared by THT throughout its history. Particularly in the early days of the UK epidemic, THT was a one of very few reliable sources of information on HIV. The very fact that it produced a leaflet entitled AIDS and the chalice in the early 1980s gives some kind of idea of the scale of the task it faced and how hysterical and ill informed the popular response to HIV was.
THT's recent mergers with smaller HIV charities in London and across the UK has ensured the continuity of voluntary services for many people affected by HIV. Its services have also evolved to address the new issues presented by HAART, and as the number of people with HIV in the UK is set to double over the next five years, THT looks set to be busier than ever.
Twenty years of hard work has earned THT the praise of the Prime Minister, however, dedicated funding for HIV prevention was recently mainstreamed and HIV and sexual health are not included in the government's health priorities at a time when sexual health and HIV clinics across the country cannot cope with demand. It looks like THT has another 20 years of producing reliable health information and campaigining for equality ahead of it.