The book. At a time when the Covid-19 seems to be establishing itself permanently in the human population, the book by Olivier Maurel and Michel Bourrelly, A history of the fight against AIDS, sheds light on the societal impact of the AIDS pandemic. Former players in this struggle, particularly within the Aides association, the two authors rely on a rich body of interviews, archives and testimonies to tell it.
Some analogies with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic are striking, whether it is doubts about the scope of the epidemic or the commercial issues of access to public health tools, screening tests in the case HIV and vaccines in that of Covid-19. “It was a bit of war medicine. We did not know how to manage the number of cases. The patients suffered from several ailments at the same time. We were trying to manage. Not to mention that the staff were absolutely unaware of the risk-taking when administering care ”, remembers the infectious disease specialist Elisabeth Bouvet, from the Bichat hospital in Paris.
This fight was born from the will of patients, initially stigmatized under the label “4H” for homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts and Haitians, not to suffer the disease and to become both experts and helpers. A portrait of the activist Cleews Vellay, who was president of Act Up-Paris from 1992 to 1994, tells how, according to his will, his ashes were notably dispersed during a congress of insurers to protest against the discriminatory conditions reserved for people. HIV positive, inspiring a scene from the film 120 beats per minute.
Health democracy
The book also traces the case of contaminated blood, resulting from the delay deliberately taken by the National Blood Transfusion Center in the detection and deactivation of blood products contaminated with HIV intended for transfusion of people with hemophilia. “Ultimately, the contaminated blood affair left a lasting impression, not only because of its media coverage and its emotional nature, but also because it reveals everyone’s vulnerability to medicine and that its dramaturgy has opposed to the “powerful” vis-à-vis destitute victims ”, analyze the authors.
This fight has also helped to forge the concept of health democracy, the authors of which question the meaning, while the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the shortcomings of the managerial logic at work in the transformation of the public hospital over the years. last twenty years. “Of course, you have to react quickly. But the urgency does not justify that one is exempted from all public debate, as if the word of the people concerned were incidental. Healthy democracy is never incidental, even in an emergency, a fortiori when the dilemma between freedom and constraint is so acute ”, insists in an interview Karine Lefeuvre, vice-president of the National Consultative Ethics Council.
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