And I really never thought he'd be healthy enough to go to school.īut as he started getting healthy, as he started gaining weight, he started to ask, 'Mom,' he said, 'I want to go to school. So at that time, I thought every cough, every fever, I worried that it was going to be his last. When Ryan was diagnosed, they only gave him three to six months to live. Ryan really became famous because of his fight to go to school. It became apparent just like overnight that all of a sudden things were different. And all of a sudden the CDC shows up and the CDC started putting in all kinds of precautions, you know: the gowns, the gloves, the masks, and so forth, and started talking to the nurses and so forth. There were no precautions at the hospital. I really never really believed he had AIDS for quite a while.Īt that time, of course, he had no precautions or anything. I felt like, 'How could he have AIDS?' He was a hemophiliac since birth, and I just felt like 'How could he be one of the first ones?' I felt like somehow, in some way, it was going to be something else. So I was living in Kokomo, Indiana, and Ryan was attending Western Middle School, and it was something that I really didn't even believe he had. He was one of the first children-one of the first hemophiliacs-to come down with AIDS, and it was definitely a time when there was no education and there was hardly any information on AIDS at the time. Ryan White was diagnosed with AIDS on December 17, 1984. Ryan’s mom, Jeanne White Ginder, recounts the early years of struggle, pain, and triumph. Congress passed the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act in August 1990. He died in April 1990, one month before his high school graduation. Surprising his doctors, Ryan lived five years longer than expected. He gained national attention and became the face of public education about the disease. Along with his mother Jeanne White Ginder, he rallied for his right to attend school. When Ryan tried to return to school, he faced AIDS-related discrimination in his Indiana community. Living in Kokomo, Indiana, doctors gave him six months to live. Ryan White was 13 when he was diagnosed with AIDS after a blood transfusion in December 1984.

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