“I can buy life and that’s not fair,” says Aids campaigner

A US HIV/Aids campaigner has told of his ‘survivor’s guilt’ and the inequalities of treatment across the world as he reflects on living his life infected for what for some would be a life time. “I can buy life, that's not fair," said Eric Sawyer, who was infected with HIV on New Year's Eve, the last night of 1980. Within a couple of weeks he began feeling sick. His doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. It would take longer than three years before anyone would identify the mysterious and deadly illness that was affecting so many gay men throughout the US.

In 1984, the US Health Secretary Margaret Heckler, serving under President Ronald Reagan, made the historic announcement of the discovery of a virus thought to cause Aids. The virus would eventually be known as HIV. At her press conference Ms Heckler made the astonishing prediction that a vaccine to prevent Aids could be developed within two years. Eric Sawyer was hopeful: "It was somewhat promising when Secretary Heckler announced that there was a discovery of the virus," he said in an interview with the BBC in New York.

Meanwhile, Eric's partner Scott, whom he was living with at the time, was showing serious symptoms of Aids. "We knew he was a ticking time-bomb and we didn't know how much longer he had. "I was symptomatic at the time so I was just really hopeful and praying that the optimism they had in finding a cure within six months or year would come true – I didn't want to lose my partner and I didn't want to die myself." He wasn't even 30 years old. "Who wants to die at 30? We were hoping against all odds they would find a treatment so we wouldn't die."

But Scott did die. Eric's other life partner Bill died too. "I do have survivor's guilt. It compels my daily life,” he said in the interview broadcast today. "It's a tremendous blessing to have survived with symptoms of this illness now for 28 years. But almost everybody who was symptomatic when I became symptomatic is dead." Eric now worries the younger generation do not understand the reality of HIV. "They have grown up in the age of HIV, they're aware of it but they're not afraid of it. They haven't seen hundreds of their friends die from it. "They haven't seen the horror of disfigurement, or people with herpes infections literally eating their lips and noses and walking around like skeletons covered in really thin skin when they're in their 20s. "There are all these misperceptions that HIV is just some other chronic manageable illness. But the drugs are horribly toxic, the side-effects horrendous.""I can buy life"

Eric's £27,000 a yearly medication bill is mostly covered by insurance. But many don't have the luxury of having their life saving drugs paid for. He's currently advocating for universal health care within the US. "I'm alive today because I have access to the latest medical treatment, the latest technologies, the latest drugs – because I'm an upper middle-class person with health insurance and I can buy life. And that's not fair."

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children