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Children With AIDS Charity - Supporting families infected and affected by HIV/AIDS
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In 1991 a Specialist Paediatric HIV Service was established in St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London. In 1992 the team were seeing an increase in the number of children they were caring for and seeing the impact that HIV had on children and their families.
Rebecca Handel, whose daughter Bonnie was being cared for at St Mary’s, met Jo Dodge, the coordinator of the service, to discuss the shortage in the existing provision of services for children infected and affected by HIV. Being white, middle-class and Jewish, Rebecca shattered all HIV-positive stereotypes, having become infected with HIV through a blood transfusion in her second pregnancy, before blood was screened for the virus.
Together with the paediatric team of St. Mary’s they decided to start a charity that could respond to the specific practical, emotional and educational requirements of children and their families infected and affected by HIV. A committee was formed in 1992 and on 12th October 1993 the Children With AIDS Charity was officially registered. Bonnie Handel, Rebecca’s daughter, died in St Mary’s Hospital the following December; Rebecca Handel died on 1 January 1995.
