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Edinburgh Live
03-07-2025
- Health
- Edinburgh Live
Pioneering Edinburgh AIDS hospice that served as 'sanctuary for many' to close
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info A pioneering Edinburgh AIDS hospice is set to change hands as the needs of patients 'has evolved'. Milestone House, which opened back in 1991 by Waverley Care, provided end of life care for those who were dying from AIDS. When it launched, with a visit from Princess Diana, it was the UK's first purpose built AIDS hospice and saw many say goodbye to loved ones in its walls. With treatments becoming more successful, and patients living 'really well' within the community, the service is no longer needed and will be transferred. The building, on Oxgangs Road North, will continue to provide services for those experiencing homelessness or affected by substance use which Waverley Care have been doing since the pandemic. Grant Sugden, Chief Executive at Waverley Care, told Edinburgh Live that the time is right for the move. While he feels that the support they've been offering since 2020 has been valuable, it has 'moved away from the core mission'. He added: "Milestone opened in 1991, and was the UK's first purpose-built AIDS hospice. It provided end of life care to people who were dying of AIDs, there were no treatments at that time. "It was about end of life care, and providing dignity and support to those people in very difficult times. It's evolved as HIV evolved, we got treatments in 1997 so it became more of a respite care model providing services to those living with HIV or Hepatitis C who had complex health needs. "Since 2020, it's been providing a very different service for a different population. We're in the process of transferring to a new provider, so the service will continue. In terms of HIV, this is good news. We no longer need a service like Milestone. Sign up for Edinburgh Live newsletters for more headlines straight to your inbox "We were then seeing a decline in demand for the service, people can live really well in the community when they're on treatment. During the pandemic we were asked to support the NHS and the council by providing a services for a whole range of people. The focus isn't on HIV at the building anymore, so we're not the right organisation to be providing it." The charity feels that with HIV 'no longer being the diagnosis it once was', they are able to provide outreach services and continue with their core mission. Grant added: "It's really good news that treatment has evolved so much that Milestone isn't needed. "It's been a very important and special place for many people, those who lost members of their family at Milestone, so we're looking into how we can mark and reflect on the significance of that." Staff at Milestone will be transferred to the new provider, who will continue to provide the same service for those experiencing homelessness and issues with substance use. Staff at Milestone were thanked for their 'continued dedication, compassion and professionalism'. Join Edinburgh Live's Whatsapp Community here and get the latest news sent straight to your messages. Grant added: 'It's not been a financially driven decision, to be honest. 'It's been purely that this service is now for a very different community, and we're not the right organisation for it. Moving forward, we want to be able to focus on the needs of people living with or at risk of HIV and that's our priority. 'We will continue to support people living with and aging with HIV, but we can do that in the community and we can link in with all the other agencies to support them. They don't need to do it in a residential model.' A spokesperson for Waverley Care added: "After more than 30 years of providing care, compassion, and community, we are preparing to say goodbye to Milestone House, the UK's first purpose-built AIDS hospice and an incredible part of Waverley Care's history. "As the needs of people living with HIV have changed, and residential care is no longer required, so has our focus. This next chapter allows us to strengthen our work by supporting people affected by HIV and Hepatitis C in their communities. "We are incredibly proud of Milestone's legacy and the dedicated team who made it the sanctuary it has been for so many years."
The Guardian
20-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Peter Krykant obituary
The drugs policy campaigner Peter Krykant, who has died suddenly aged 48, advanced the cause of the harm reduction movement through a transformative act of civil disobedience. Fitting out a van as a mobile safer drug consumption space and making it available to Glasgow's most vulnerable homeless addicts broke the law. And it also – eventually – broke the stalemate around UK drugs policy, propelled Scotland's drug deaths crisis further up the political agenda and, most importantly, saved lives. Krykant's law-breaking plan coalesced in February 2020 after he attended what he saw as another talking shop – a Scottish government conference focused on drug deaths, which took place 24 hours before a UK government summit on the same subject, at the same Glasgow venue. It seemed to him a ludicrous show of escalating tensions between the two administrations. 'The conferences were the final straw, and the fact that [a drug consumption room pilot] is being used as a political football,' he told the Guardian a week later. 'As a person who went through my own trauma – drug use and street homelessness issues many years ago – I cannot stand back.' Within days of announcing his plan to purchase a vehicle and customise it as a mobile safer-injecting suite, Krykant had raised more than £2,000. He was immediately sacked from his job as an HIV outreach worker at the charity Waverley Care. Undeterred by the looming global Covid pandemic, Krykant recognised that, as services contracted, the homeless drug users who congregated around Trongate in Glasgow were even more in need. So he struck out in the midst of lockdown, first in a minibus nicknamed 'the Tank' and later in a converted ambulance, providing clean water, needles and swabs, as well as supplies of naloxone, the potentially life-saving drug that reverses the effects of opioid overdose. Rules included using your own drugs, and agreeing to an overdose intervention if needed. Writing in the Guardian, Krykant later explained: 'Overdose prevention services are an internationally recognised way of reducing drug-related harms. It benefits everyone by supporting the most vulnerable and saving taxpayers' money on ambulance callouts, hospital admissions and council clean-up teams.' The local police largely tolerated his activity, although he was charged in October 2020 for obstructing officers attempting to search his van – the charges were later dropped. He continued operating until May 2021. More than 1,000 injections were supervised, and nine overdoses reversed. 'It was the trust people had in Peter, the cup of tea and the Mars bar, that really helped them and is hard to quantify,' said the MSP Paul Sweeney, who became a close friend when the pair volunteered together at the van. 'He proved all the naysayers and the procrastinators wrong. He never said it was a silver bullet but Peter knew firsthand the particular risks for people who inject on the street and saw that this intervention could directly save lives.' Krykant was always insistent that addiction should be understood in the wider context of poverty and inequality, a message he took around the doorsteps of his local Holyrood constituency of Falkirk East when he stood for the Scottish parliament elections in May 2021. A Guardian film, which followed his campaign, captures his younger son, aglow with pride, explaining to the producers: 'I've got three reasons you should vote for my dad: because he's honest, reliable and he listens to people's suggestions.' But the responsibility he evidently carried for every individual he helped, the memories they stirred of his own trauma as well as escalating public scrutiny, took their toll and Krykant relapsed. He had talked openly about darker currents in his childhood in the village of Maddiston, near Falkirk; trauma and sexual abuse that would lead him to start taking drugs when he was 11. He left school with no formal qualifications, and by his late teens he was sleeping rough and injecting heroin. But eventually he found support to live drug-free, and worked successfully in sales for over a decade, first in Brighton, and later returning north of the border, where he subsequently trained as an addiction support worker. During this time he married and started a family, taking market research work to fit around caring for his two young sons. Krykant had continued his advocacy work in recent years, passing the van on to the Transform Drug Policy Foundation and embarking on a tour across the UK. Lately he worked at the harm reduction charity Cranstoun, where he developed an overdose response app called BuddyUp and represented the organisation at events around the world. When the UK's first legal drug consumption room, the Thistle, opened its doors in Glasgow this January, there were many who drew a direct line from his minibus to its airy vestibule. Others felt his contribution had been sidelined to make way for more mainstream voices, or that his vulnerabilities had been exploited by those who desired the frisson of his lived experience for their campaigns. This winter, say friends, Krykant found himself at his lowest ebb. His marriage had collapsed, he had lost his job and he was struggling to support himself, worrying about the impact this had on his sons. Martin Powell, who drove the van on its UK tour, said: 'He was the catalyst and without him we might still be waiting. Without question there are people alive today who would not be without Peter Krykant. It's an absolute tragedy that he isn't one of them.' Krykant is survived by his sons. Peter Krykant, campaigner, born 13 November 1976; died 9 June 2025
