Thinking Politically About HIV by Kent Buse & Dennis Altman

Author:Kent Buse & Dennis Altman [Buse, Kent & Altman, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415825542
Goodreads: 17803516
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The creation of the Swiss Aids Federation

Homosexual activists received substantial support from the recently named director of the epidemiological section of the FOPH, Bertino Somaini. Somaini proved to be one of the principal architects of rapprochement of public authorities and homosexual groups. Before being named to the FOPH, he was engaged in post-graduate study at the University of California, Berkeley. It was at Berkeley that Somaini first heard of AIDS. He also witnessed the initial organizing of the American homosexual movement. He combined what he learned from this experience with the Swiss administrative approach to social problems:

The homosexuals in San Francisco were very well organized, and therefore it was a hundred times better to let a private organization act rather than have the authorities intervene. [...]. So we, the state, we said: 'we will finance you, but only if you get together' [...]. There was no direct pressure from the state; there was the experience of what happens when the state wants an organization like the FOPH to intervene. [...] The state supports an umbrella organization and, after that, it works, parliament comes up with the money. This is the administrative approach. So, I followed it. (Somaini interview)

To avoid dispersal of resources, Somaini suggested that AIDS delegates create a unified organization as quickly as possible, stressing that the FOPH could only associate with preventative actions in the field of AIDS if the structure that it might support was sufficiently generalist. This would allow for the widespread dissemination of HIV prevention messages to the entire population and unite people active in other groups who were also strongly affected by HIV/AIDS notably sex workers and social workers dealing with drug users.

AIDS delegates of homosexual working groups first attempted to coordinate their actions and then present a united front before the FOPH. From this dual perspective, they chose to establish the first organization, named AIDS-Hilfe Schweiz (Swiss Help Against AIDS). Three people played a pivotal role in its conception: Marcel Ulmann, president of SOH, Herbert Riedener, president of the Zurich 'leather association', Loge 70, and Roger Staub, member of the Zurich gay liberation group (HAZ). Given the urgency of the situation, and putting aside the dissensions amongst the gay associations concerning AIDS, all three volunteers defended an approach favouring rapid intervention in the field of prevention.

On 2 June 1985, the Swiss Aids Federation (Aide Suisse contre le sida/AIDS-Hilfe Schweiz –SAF) was officially founded in Zurich at an assembly bringing together fourteen homosexual associations. The FOPH also became a member, which was unprecedented: this was the first time that a state organization belonged to a private association, not to mention a organization founded by homosexuals. The first president of SAF was the television journalist André Ratti. At the opening of SAF's first press conference on 2 July 1985, he declared: 'My name is André Ratti. I am homosexual myself, I am 50 years old, and since April I have known that I have AIDS'. The conference served to remind the public that gays were not the only ones affected, and neither were drug users or sex workers.

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