HIV in Wales

The first case of AIDS-related illness in Wales was of a haemophiliac in January 1983. When this was reported months later, Cardiff become the focus of immense media interest.

According to Daryl Leeworthy’s A Little Gay History of Wales, University College Swansea features strongly in the early epidemic – from a cleaners’ strike about a touring theatre group Gay Sweatshop, the university delaying the matriculation of a first year student with haemophilia and the UCS students’ union organising a stigma-busting ‘AIDS Awareness Week’. 

In Autumn 1986, the Welsh Rugby Union order players be screened for HIV/AIDS, and people impacted by HIV/AIDS were banned from using Sports Council of Wales facilities and swimming pools run by Arfon Borough Council. Later in the same year, the Welsh AIDS Campaign was established but within twelve months was merged with Health Advisory Committee of Wales and ‘sank without trace’. 

Cardiff AIDS Helpline, launched in July 1986 with funding from South Glamorgan Health Authority, although it built on an earlier initiative run by community volunteers from Cardiff FRIEND. A counselling service followed in 1987; these services eventually came under the umbrella of the South Glamorgan AIDS Network. Gwent AIDS Helpline came into existence in 1987 through the auspices of the Gwent Centre for Health Promotion, but the Mid Glamorgan AIDS Helpline was not set up until the 1990s. 

In the 1980s and 1990s, the numbers of people living with HIV were very low in Wales. In South Glamorgan, the county with the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection in Wales, just 4 cases had been identified by the summer of 1986 (3 of whom had died) – a very small proportion of the 350 cases nationwide at the time. Just 14 cases had been identified by the end of 1989. As late as 1997, lechyd Morgannwg, then the health board for Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot, noted that just 40 people had been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in West Glamorgan, of whom 26 had died. Every death represented a personal tragedy and untold heartache. 

It was Terry’s friend, and son-of-Newport, Martyn Butler who alongside Terry’s then partner and other friends who founded our organisation to help those left behind. Martyn raised the first funding for the Terrence Higgins Trust, gave his home phone number to be our first helpline and spoke time and again in the press about the loss of Terry in November 1982 and the difficult subject of HIV.