AIDS: Doctors and Nurses Tell Their Story

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Friday 18 November 2016, 1.30-3.30pm – Treasure House Theatre, 2^nd Floor, World Museum, William Brown Street, Liverpool, L3 8EN.

As part of this year’s World AIDS day activities Sahir House has organised a private viewing of ‘AIDS: Doctors and Nurses Tell Their Story’. Also showing will be ‘Now + Then, 3 Decades of HIV on Merseyside’.

For the first time, doctors and nurses who cared for Britain’s first AIDS patients in the 1980s tell their stories. They describe a dark time when, with little treatment on offer, their role was to help these young men deal with early, painful and often undignified deaths. The extraordinary situation saw the medics bend and break the rules to provide some comfort and fun for their patients. They formed close friendships with the men they were treating, went to their funerals, mourn them to this day. But that important work took a substantial toll.

This film comes when the legacy of that period is in danger of being forgotten. Black and white photographs of young gay men who were patients on hospital wards are intercut with the honest testimony from the nurses and doctors who fought to give their patients the best death they could in the worst circumstances.

The film will be publicly launched as part of the Pout Film Festival next year when it will be shown in a number of Curzon Cinemas in the UK.

Following on from the film will be an opportunity to ask questions from people who were diagnosed HIV positive 30 years ago and Liverpool’s specialist HIV nurses.

For further information on this year’s World AIDS Day activities, go to the Sahir House website or contact Serena Cavanagh on 0151 237 3989 / at info@sahir.uk.com.

This is a free event but you need to reserve your place by email to adam.gledhill@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk or call 0151 478 4050.