Photograph of Founder AIDS Helpline volunteers 1985

Photograph of Founder AIDS Helpline volunteers 1985

AIDS organizations

Founder AIDS Helpline volunteers 1985. The arrival of Aids in Northern Ireland stimulated the gay community to respond by Cara – Friend setting up the Northern Ireland Aids Helpline. The organisation eventually became a separate entity and ultimately became the Rainbow Project. This photograph shows some of the founder members: Brian Gilmore and Mike Young. Front left to right: Julie MacRea, Suzanne Johnston, Stella Mahon, Mary Torney and Doug Sobey.
Aids was first observed in 1981 in the United States. The initial cases were a cluster of injecting drug users and homosexual men with no known cause of impaired immunity. In the early days, there was no official name for the disease, often referred to it by way of the diseases that were associated with it. At one point, the CDC coined the phrase “the 4H disease’, since the syndrome seemed to affect heroin users, homosexuals, hemophiliacs and Haitians.
In the general press, the term ‘GRID’, which stood for gay-related immune deficiency, had been coined. However, after determining that AIDS was not isolated to the gay community, it was realised that the term GRID was misleading and the term AIDS was introduced in 1982.

Sobey, Doug

Ulster Museum Collection

1985

© Photo by Doug Sobey, Ulster Museum Collection. Items in this digital archive are covered by a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No-
Derivatives License. Please credit the LGBT HERITAGE PROJECT Northern Ireland, and provide a link back to this site.

photograph

still image

Belfast, Northern Ireland