The lonely heroine of Aids: How one activist did so much to help
Aids activist Ruth Coker Burks. Picture: Joe Maher/Getty Images
IN the spring of 1986, Ruth Coker Burks was in the medical centre in Little Rock, Arkansas, visiting a friend with cancer, when she noticed three nurses drawing straws to see which one would have to enter a patient’s room. Curious, she snuck down the corridor to take a look. The door was hung with a scarlet tarp and a biohazard sign. Food trays were piled on the floor outside, along with a cart of isolation suits and masks. Inside, she found an emaciated young man calling for his mother.
When Coker Burks challenged the nurses, one of them told her she was crazy to go in.
