Beny Primm

Beny Primm, a doctor who founded clinics to help heroin addicts in the 1960s and who advocated for clean-needle programs and HIV prevention campaigns in the 1980s, died at age 87, The New York Times reports.

As an African-American anesthesiologist working in Harlem, New York, emergency rooms in the early 1960s, Primm witnessed the devastation that drug addiction had on the black community. Moved by what he saw, he became an advocate who crusaded against addiction.

He saw his first AIDS case in 1983. Realizing the link between HIV and injection drug use, he worked to increase HIV treatment and prevention efforts for drug users at a time when gay men were receiving most of the focus.

In 1987, Primm was named to Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic. He also served on the National Drug Abuse Advisory Council and was the executive director of the Addiction Research and Treatment Corporation (now known as Start Treatment and Recovery Centers).

Paul Kawata, the executive director of the National Minority AIDS Council, remembers Primm as a friend and mentor. For details, read Kawata’s POZ blog entry titled “Rest in Peace Dr. Beny Primm.”