Drugs, HIV and Ireland: responses to women in Dublin.

The advent of HIV disease signalled the need for services that were responsive to new and different needs of client groups within the existing health and social care provision systems. This book sought to document some aspects of women's experience of HIV disease and did so by drawing upon interview data collected in several countries. Chapter 4 presented the findings from the study carried out in Dublin. The economic and social conditions in Ireland were explained, and social behaviour and policy decisions were set within their specific cultural context. Information was gathered during May 1989 by means of two semi-structured discussion groups with carers for HIV-positive women and HIV-positive women themselves. Individual interviews with three HIV-positive women and the sister of a woman who had recently died of an AIDS-related illness were also conducted. The typical HIV-positive woman in Dublin at the end of the 1980s was described by the authors as young, from a working-class background, having contracted the virus either through sexual relationships with drug-using men, or from injecting drugs herself