Unsung heroes: The true story of the medic couple and Holy Cross nuns who fought on the frontline of Utah’s AIDS epidemic
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was the number one killer of young and middle-aged people in Utah from 1985 to 1986. Many of those affected died desperate and alone, either abandoned in their homes or in the hospital run by one person in the entire state who was willing to risk all for their care — Dr. Kristen Reis.
Dr. Reis, an Infectious Disease Specialist, came to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1981 to set up her medical practice and it was pure luck which brought her to a city beginning to witness a staggering number of cases of a mysterious disease which had not been identified yet: HIV/AIDS. The disease was curiously targeting homosexual men in the region and that’s how Dr Reis knew that the struggle to treat the patients in a conservative community of Salt Lake City was not going to be easy.
