Recovering mothers’ experiences of HIV/AIDS health activism in Edinburgh, 1983– 2000

Abstract

This chapter traces how healthcare workers and HIV-affected mothers responded to the AIDS crisis in Edinburgh in the last two decades of the twentieth century. In particular, it examines how women’s health needs and needs as carers were met by the creation of new organisations and resources. It explores the ways the lives of HIV-positive mothers in Edinburgh were shaped by interdisciplinary collaborative HIV/AIDS care and activism born out of the daily fight for resources, information, space, and empathetic treatment for women and their families. Activism such as this was often indistinguishable from survival or best practice, occurring in the clinic and the home, in acts of care performed by medical practitioners and family members, and through the voicing and documenting of needs. This work can be traced through a wide variety of texts and archives, and was at the very least a backdrop for many women’s experience of HIV and AIDS in Edinburgh.