Paddy Chew
| Paddy Chew | |
|---|---|
| Born | 29 March 1960 Katong Beach, Singapore |
| Died | 21 August 1999 (aged 39) |
| Cause of death | Complications of HIV Infection. |
| Occupation | Cabaret writer, actor |
| Known for | The first publicly identified AIDS victim in Singapore. |
Paddy Chew (simplified Chinese: 周丰林; traditional Chinese: 周豐林; pinyin: Zhōu Fēng Lín; 29 March 1960 – 21 August 1999) was the first Singaporean AIDS victim to come out to the general public.
He attended St. Stephen's School and St. Patrick's School before becoming a flight steward. He worked for Singapore Airlines for thirteen years, after which he joined the Boom Boom Room, Singapore's first drag cabaret.
Chew was not aware of AIDS or HIV during the first half of his career as a flight attendant, and never used a condom. He began practising safe sex after hearing of the disease in 1986 or '87, but fell ill in 1995, two years after leaving Singapore Airlines. His hospital caretakers were inexperienced with his condition, failing to recognise his oral thrush until he made the diagnosis. He was put through a series of standard medical tests before being administered an HIV test at his request, to the reluctance of his doctors.
After his diagnosis he was relieved to know what was wrong. He travelled to Brussels to begin receiving treatment unavailable in Singapore at the time, but by 1996 he had lost 45% of his weight and his health was failing rapidly.
Out of an inability to function and a desire to prevent scandalising his workplace should his condition be discovered, he left the Boom Boom Room.
On 12 December 1998 during the First National AIDS Conference in Singapore, Chew became the first Singaporean AIDS patient to publicly declare his disease, but he was not the first AIDS patient in Singapore. The first was his colleague, a flight steward of mixed parentage. He declared himself bisexual but had yet to identify a woman who had slept with him.
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