Emmenez-moi  - Take me away  -  Charles Aznavour

To the docks where the weight and boredom
bend my back,
they arrive with their bellies heavy
with fruit, the boats.

They come from the ends of the earth
bringing with them
wandering ideas
with reflections of blue skies,
of mirages

Trailing a peppery scent
of unknown countries
and eternal summers
where people live almost naked
on the beaches.

I, who have known nothing all my life
but the northern sky,
would like to wash away this greyness
by changing course.

Take me to the end of the earth,
take me to wonderland.
It seems to me that misery
would be less painful in the sun.

One fine day on a rickety old boat
from hull to deck,
to set sail I'll work in
the coal bunker.

Taking the road that leads
to my childhood dreams
to distant islands
where nothing matters
but living.

I'll flee, leaving my past behind
without any regrets,
unburdened and with a free heart
singing at the top of my lungs.

Take me to the end of the earth
take me to wonderland.
It seems to me that misery
would be less painful in the sun.

Sid’amour à mort - AIDS-Love to Death  - Barbara

If loving each other for love
means dying of love,
they died of love –
AIDS, AIDS-stricken.
The damned of love,
dying from love –
they died of love,
of love marked by AIDS.

Oh AIDS, AIDS,
danger: AIDS.
Oh AIDS, AIDS,
love to death.
Oh AIDS, wanted assassin –
but who killed love?

My sick love,
my pain of loving,
my damned one of love –
AIDS-marked.
Wanting to love you,
love until death –
maybe I’ll die of it too,
AIDS-laced love.

Oh AIDS, AIDS,
danger: AIDS.
Oh deadly love,
disease of love,
where one dies of loving,
alone and without love,
abandoned by AIDS.
If only one could still
love each other for love,
to die from loving –
to heal this sickness of love
that made us die,
abandoned by AIDS.

If loving each other for love
means dying of love,
they died of love –
alone and AIDS-stricken.
The damned of love,
wanting to love,
died of love –
murdered by AIDS.

Successful health policy excludes nobody

Federal Councillor Jans
Friends of the Swiss Aids Federation
Liebe Gäste – cher-e-s invité-e-s – cari ospiti – dear guests

Many thanks for this moving act of commemoration!

I worked as a drug coordinator for the city of Bern in the 1990s. So this was a real flashback for me – to a time of great sadness, full of human tragedies.

But I’d like to focus on the hope and the consolation offered by the quilt-making ritual. And thus on the essence of what has been made possible by the Swiss Aids Federation:

“Successful health policy excludes nobody”

That’s easily said today! And Switzerland largely owes that to the Swiss Aids Federation, and to the people who have supported it. It’s clear to us today that stigmatisation and discrimination are degrading and detrimental to health – fear of contempt and exclusion makes people ill.

The fact that we now know this has a lot to do with HIV/Aids. And with the people who died at that time. In the early 1980s, infection with the virus was life-threatening. Many – far too many – people died. That in itself meant a lot of suffering. To make matters worse, the people concerned suffered exclusion as well.

In Switzerland, what was then the gay movement was the first to organise around this issue. Apart from injecting drug users, men who have sex with men were most affected by the disease. HIV/Aids also threatened their struggle for equal rights and social acceptance.
The disease was then called the “gay plague”. And some politicians also took this opportunity to devalue those concerned socially and morally, and to marginalise them.

The Swiss Aids Federation was formed as a counterweight in June 1985, aiming to provide information and recommendations based on science. It sought to protect people against HIV/Aids – and called for those concerned to be treated with human decency.

This approach was also adopted by the FOPH. A few days after the foundation of the Swiss Aids Federation, an initial meeting was held, and it was agreed that close collaboration would be pursued. Though here I must admit that the Swiss Aids Federation put quite a lot of pressure on the FOPH. And rightly so. And successfully too. For this we are still grateful today. Also because this was the point at which the FOPH transformed itself from an old-fashioned bureaucratic institution into a federal office that dares to call a spade a spade. This became evident in 1987 with the launch of the joint STOP AIDS campaign, addressed to the public throughout Switzerland. It aimed to ensure that everyone was well-informed about HIV/Aids so that they could learn to assess their individual risk of infection, and so that everyone in Switzerland would know how to protect themselves.

Let’s not forget: at the peak of the epidemic in the early 1990s, there were over 3,000 new infections per year. Over all those years, thousands of people died. Together, the FOPH and the Swiss Aids Federation worked to prevent panic and exclusion. They thus laid the foundations for what are probably Switzerland’s best known and most successful public health campaigns: all German-speaking Swiss of my generation immediately understand “Röllele, röllele, röllele” (“Roll on a condom”) or “Ohne Dings kein Bums” (“Without protection, no sex”). For the francophones of my generation, it would be “Sécurité sur canapé” (“Safety on the sofa”) or “Tu es un très bon coup – mais tu n’es pas le seul!” (“You’re a very good lay – but you’re not the only one”). Whereas the Italian speaking Swiss would remember “Senza coso non si cosa” (“No jigging without a thingummy!”) The Swiss Aids Federation thus also made a significant contribution to the normalisation of homosexual relations or multiple sexual partnerships.

The Swiss Aids Federation has become established as a national umbrella organisation. And – with more than 50 member organisations – it remains a key partner on matters of sexual health for the FOPH, for cantonal health authorities, and for schools and youth associations.

In the early days, the Swiss Aids Federation also played an important role in addiction policy, with a human rights-based approach, which is health-oriented rather than being exclusively repressive. This gave rise to the four-pillar policy, involving harm reduction, prevention, law enforcement and treatment. This approach resolved an important aspect of the drug problem, practically reducing HIV infections to zero.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you all sincerely – on behalf of the FOPH – for your courage, for your work, and for your commitment, over all these years. And, of course, I look forward to continuing our collaboration so that we can succeed in eliminating new HIV infections altogether and also controlling other sexually transmitted diseases.

Dear Swiss Aids Federation
Year in, year out, your guiding principle has been “Nothing about us, without us”. Rather than talking about the people concerned, they themselves are actively involved. And so it’s still true today that “Successful health policy excludes nobody.”

Let’s stick to this credo! It’s vital.

And I also hope that you will soon be able to look back and say: “We shaped the response to HIV/Aids from A to Z: from the Arrival of the pandemic to Zero new infections.

My very best wishes on your 40th anniversary!

Dear Bourbines,
Dear Welsche,
Dear Anne Lévy,

My dear Marie-Thérèse,

You are direct, assertive, and have clear opinions. And you have circus experience! You belong in politics. Had you entered the race for the Federal Council at the beginning of the year – as a woman – who knows what might have happened? I would have been delighted if you had been elected. At least until the first Federal Council meeting!

Dear guests,

I am even more delighted to be here and to honour four decades of commitment, courage and compassion with you. Today we are celebrating 40 years of Swiss AIDS Federation and AIDS support organisations in Switzerland. Several member organisations are also celebrating anniversaries: the one here in Zurich – now called Sexuelle Gesundheit Zürich – and the AIDS support organisations in Bern, St Gallen-Appenzell and Ticino. Today, however, we are not so much celebrating organisations as the people who make them what they are – and that is all of you.

Being here today is very important to me. I have been involved in the fight against AIDS for years, partly because my wife Tracy – who is also here today – has dedicated her career to this cause. Thirteen years ago, when our children were six and four, she completed her doctorate in statistics at the University of Basel using data from the Swiss HIV Cohort Study – one of the world's best data sets. She then took her expertise to the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, where she set up an HIV cohort study in Tanzania. Her goal was to improve care and access to medication in rural African regions where infection rates were particularly high and many people were suffering.

From everything I have heard, read and seen in Africa, thanks to Tracy, I know that the Swiss scientific community has made a huge contribution to saving millions of lives. We've now reached a point where stopping the transmission of the virus altogether seems within reach. That is something that nobody dared to hope for 40 years ago.

Back in 1986, André Ratti, a well-known television journalist and president of the AIDS Federation, said: "The realisation hit me: I have this damn disease and it's going to kill me." One month later he was dead. I remember very well the terrible feeling that gripped us when we learned that HIV was deadly and could affect anyone. I remember the deep sadness we felt when we lost friends and loved ones, or icons like Freddie Mercury: "Another one bites the dust."

Like many other countries, Switzerland was profoundly affected by the AIDS epidemic. In the 1980s, the virus was new, little understood, and frightening. There was a great deal of fear, especially within the gay community: the fear of dying, but also fear of social exclusion and stigmatisation. These are existential fears.

In this difficult situation, Switzerland took an extraordinary path. When I say 'Switzerland', I don't just mean the state. The federal government, cantons, communes, experts, those affected and civil society organisations all pulled together. The Swiss AIDS Federation played a key part.

At that time, the focus was on providing people with scientific information and recommendations so they could protect themselves effectively against HIV and AIDS. Research was promoted and increasingly effective treatments were developed and made available. Forty years later, we can say that this has been a great success: in 2008, the Committee for AIDS Issues and the Federal Office of Public Health proclaimed in the Swiss Statement that people with HIV who are treated with antiretroviral drugs do not transmit the virus. This was a significant milestone for the people affected by the virus, and their loved ones.

Today, science and facts as the basis for political decisions and social action are openly being called into question. 'Alternative facts', fake news, and conspiracy theories are gaining ground.

Back then, the focus was on education and prevention, and counselling services were set up. People acted sensibly and consistently. The Stop AIDS campaign, initiated by the AIDS Federation in collaboration with the Federal Office of Public Health, had a profound impact on people. The campaign featured, for example, a gay couple in a cornfield, or vegetables in suggestive positions, and Polo National sang about 'putting a rubber on it'. The campaign made many people blush. But the number of new HIV infections went down. Our safe sex rules were a hit abroad.

Today, in a world rushing from crisis to crisis, there seems to be little time for caution, consideration or careful planning. Prudence is often dismissed as a sign of weakness and a lack of resolve, while outrage and frantic activism are increasingly popular.

But what mattered most back then was solidarity. We broke taboos and resisted the temptation to stigmatise those affected by AIDS and dismiss it as a 'gay disease'. This was not the easiest path, nor was it guaranteed to be successful. There were disappointments, setbacks, and obstacles along the way. However, over time, a social consensus began to emerge, driven by reason and, above all, the courageous dedication of countless individuals.

Today, science, solidarity and diversity are under pressure. Evidence-based reasoning is being sacrificed to power politics. Progress based on facts and reason is under threat. In the US, for instance, successful health campaigns are now being stopped. The Secretary of Health is promoting discredited theories and methods of treatment that are scientifically contested. Minorities all over the world are being stigmatised, including immigrants, socially disadvantaged people, the LGBTQ+ community, and those who are sick or vulnerable.

To all of you who care – and above all, who are committed:

We must stand together and fight back with all our might. We cannot abandon the legacy of the Age of Enlightenment – and when we look back, we understand why.

The fight against AIDS in Switzerland is a double success story. In terms of outcomes, it is a success: the fight against HIV isn’t over, but in Switzerland – unlike, sadly, for André Ratti 40 years ago – AIDS is no longer a death sentence. The spread of the virus is now under control. We owe this breakthrough to science and to solidarity. But to me, it is also a success story because of how we got here: it is a testament to what we can achieve when foresight, commitment, knowledge, compassion and empathy come together.

Ladies and gentlemen, this story would not have been written without AIDS support organisations. On behalf of the Federal Council, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your commitment over the past four decades. This is for you, and for all those who are no longer with us to celebrate this occasion. I hope that, in the future, you will continue to focus on people, without judging them.

The history of AIDS support is encouraging. Let us carry this courage and confidence with us into the future. This is particularly important in today's turbulent and uncertain times.

Ms Lévy, you said that "successful health policy excludes no one." That does not only apply to healthcare policy. We mustn't let fear and uncertainty paralyse us. We must listen to the facts, not the loudest voices. Stay calm and keep a cool head. And not leave anyone behind.

Just as you all have shown us.

Thank you!