大象传媒

The coronavirus epidemic has shaken many of us out of a complacent view that if we get sick, doctors and nurses will know how to make us better again.

Living in a time where there is limited treatment - and no cure - for a new disease is a new experience for many of us, but not all.

A Big Disease with a Little Name looks back to the recent past, to a similar time, and the dawn of the AIDS crisis, which to date has affected 75 million people around the world, of which some 32 million have died.

In this Omnibus edition, we hear from Maria Maggenti and Peter Staley about the formation of the AIDS activist group, ACT UP and how it put pressure on US authorities to speed-up research into potentially life-saving drugs.

ACT UP carried out some audacious public protests, which often left New York at a standstill, and it took on the drugs company Burroughs Wellcome and Wall Street investors to lower the price of the first approved AIDS treatment, AZT.

But AZT's benefits were short-lived, as HIV grew resistant to it. This left people with HIV/AIDS looking for new experimental treatment options and an underground network of 'buyers clubs' became a resource for still to be approved medication. Christopher Harris tells his story of running the Atlanta Buyers Club.

Forty years on since the first cases of AIDS emerged the series ends by reflecting on the ways the first wave of the AIDS crisis took its toll on the people who survived it, and asks how close are we to ending epidemic levels of HIV?

Narrator: Chris Pavlo
Producer: Richard Fenton-Smith