DAniel Defert died on February 7. Founder of Aides in 1984, following the death of his companion, Michel Foucault (1926-1984), killed by AIDS. He chaired the association for seven years. He leaves behind him the indelible memory of a militant life and the principles of action that we perpetuate daily in our struggle.
Daniel Defert’s fight has notably made it possible to free the voices of people living with HIV and to put patients back at the heart of decisions concerning them. A struggle which, for example, participated in the adoption of the Kouchner law on the rights of patients, in 2002.
The activists of Aides, and all those involved in the fight once morest HIV/AIDS, are in mourning. Public figures salute the memory of the philosopher, the sociologist, the committed man. The solidarity he was able to build, the place given to the most excluded people are honored by the Head of State and the Head of Government.
Stigmatisations et discriminations
These values, praised by everyone, right up to the summit of the Republic, which have allowed so much progress and which remain crucial in the struggle that so animated Daniel Defert, what place do they occupy today in the conduct of public affairs ?
In his letter proposing the creation of Aides, dated September 29, 1984 and addressed to intellectual friends, magistrates and doctors, Daniel Defert writes: “I already knew that the issue of AIDS might no longer be confined as a medical issue. »
Today, how many public decision-makers understand that fighting an epidemic represents a global problem? That this fight must be led by taking into account stigmatization and discrimination? Who hears, and above all acts, considering that inequalities are the bed of epidemics, because they distance care as much as prevention?
In his letter, Daniel Defert evokes the ability of patients to act on the health system: ” The community [gay] the population will soon be the most informed of immune problems, the most alert to the semiology of AIDS, and doctors still confine their ethical scruples to whether or not to keep the patient silent. » A few years later, in 1989, at the International AIDS Conference in Montreal (Canada), the founder of Aides introduced the figure of the “sick as a social reformer”.
Daniel Defert considers that communities particularly vulnerable to HIV transmission, remote from the healthcare system because they face exclusion and stigmatization, must actively participate in the decisions that concern them. They have expertise in their lives with the virus and organize themselves from the start of the epidemic to assert their rights, particularly in terms of health.
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