Tributes paid to Aids and drug abuse campaigner Heather Black

Heather Black founded community group SHADA.
Heather BlackHeather Black
Heather Black

Tributes have been paid to a campaigner for those affected by the heroin and subsequent HIV/Aids crisis in Edinburgh in the 1980s.

Heather Black was a social worker who co-founded the Support Help and Advice for Drug Addiction (SHADA) community group, working tirelessly to campaign for better support for heroin users and reduce the spread of Aids caused by a lack of clean needles in the city.

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She was born in Muirhouse, where the first terminal cases of Aids were recorded.

Edinburgh was one of the worst-affected cities in Europe by the Aids crisis, in part because a crackdown on drug paraphernalia had had the unintended consequence of people sharing dirty needles and syringes and thus spreading the condition.

The city had seven out of 10 of Aids cases in Scotland, and in 1987 it was recorded that drug users made up more than 60 percent of them.

Glasgow, with no similar ban on needles, had many more drug users but far fewer of them had Aids.

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Heroin had arrived in Edinburgh in the early 1980s, with cheap supplies from Afghanistan and Iran making their way especially into areas in the North of the city, including Muirhouse and Pilton.

Campaigners like Heather Black argues that the spread of Aids was a higher priority than containing the use of heroin and other drugs, and was a greater risk to the lives of the poorest in the city.

She argued that the drug abuse at the root of the higher spread of the virus was caused by social problems, including poverty, lack of jobs and a six-year wait for housing.

Dr Roy Robertson, a GP on the Muirhouse estate, was one of the first doctors to make the link between the increase in Aids cases and the ban on needles.

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He worked with Heather Black, having first met her at a meeting of SHADA in 1984.

“Heather launched herself into the front line,” he said.

“She represented individuals and their families and never took her eye off the needs of the most difficult cases.

“She took a delight in challenging authority to do better and no situation or important figure was going to intimidate her.

“Her approach was simple. Either people, or parts of the organisation, were going to help or they were not and if they were not supportive then she was able to tell them directly and with a bluntness that surprised.”

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Ms Black represented individuals, he said, not an organisation or political movement, and just wanted support for these people.

He added: “Heather was a game changer at a time when the non statutory sector was held at arms length from social services and the NHS.

“Projects like hers invented the Third Sector, much of which was at their own cost. Heather deserves a place in the story of a public heath disaster and her contribution should be used as an example of talking truth to power.”