Vale: HIV advocate Bill Paterson was ‘a mentor to many’
By Jordan Hirst / 23 November 2025
Image: ViiV Healthcare/Supplied
Former nurse turned lifelong Australian HIV advocate Bill Paterson is being remembered for his “immeasurable” impact on improving the lives of Aussies living with HIV.
The Bobby Goldsmith Foundation announced Bill’s death in an obituary on social media on Thursday. Bill, who had worked for numerous HIV/AIDS organisations across his career, recently passed away at his home in Trentham, Victoria.
“Bill’s impact on the HIV community in Australia is immeasurable,” the Foundation wrote in an obituary.
“From his early days as a HIV nurse at the height of the epidemic in the 80s and 90s, to his later advocacy work as a person living with HIV, Bill believed in putting positive voices front and centre in all HIV related matters.”
By 1985, Bill was working as Nurse Unit Manager in Ward 17 South, the inpatient AIDS Unit at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney. In 2020, Bill reflected on the “compassion and dedication” of nurses at the forefront of the HIV epidemic.
“I witnessed firsthand, the anxiety and fear from within the healthcare system. I recall hospital staff afraid to touch the sheets and blankets of [patients], afraid to enter the hospital rooms with food, all due to their fear of HIV transmission,” he said.
“In the early days it was difficult not to get caught up in the highly stigmatising landscape. Despite the pragmatic and compassionate Australian approach to HIV, stigma and discrimination were rife.”
He said as well as queer community members rallying to care for their peers, nurses played a crucial role in the frontline response, fighting discriminatory policies and revolutionising infection control.
“What cut through the fear, discrimination and abandonment was compassion, dedication and respect of nurses who rose to the challenge, both clinical and humanitarian,” he said.
“Leading by example, nurses freely embraced and touched those they cared for, to demonstrate solidarity with their patients and dispel misunderstandings regarding infection control for people with blood borne viruses.”
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https://qnews.com.au/vale-hiv-advocate-bill-paterson-was-a-mentor-to-many/
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