Product Manager Jens Lauritzen (February 15, 1958 – May 19, 1997) is buried at Skive Cemetery. After a few years abroad, he returned home and worked for audio companies in Denmark. He died of AIDS just before treatment became available.
The young years and the Danish career
As a young man, Jens Lauritzen worked for eight years in Southern Europe as a tour guide for Tjæreborg and Spies Rejser. He returned to Denmark to work as an administration manager at the American loudspeaker company Cerwin Wega, where he was responsible for the European market. From there, Jens Lauritzen moved to Sonofon in Aalborg, where he worked as Product Manager.
Aids
Jens Lauritzen died after several years of serious illness from AIDS – around the same time that treatments were emerging that could stop HIV from developing into AIDS.
In Denmark, the health authorities registered the first cases of AIDS among gay men in 1981. In the years from 1984 to 1996, when a new combination treatment slowed the AIDS epidemic, health authorities recorded a total of 2,001 AIDS cases in Denmark. Of these, around 70% of the cases were from men who had sex with men. The rest had been infected by other means. These were populations such as injecting drug users, bleeders, sex workers and female partners of men who had sex with men. The same distribution was true among the approximately 4,500 people who were registered as HIV-positive during the same period. In 1996, medical science developed an effective combination treatment that prevented HIV from developing into AIDS. The treatment gradually ended the AIDS epidemic in Denmark and HIV became a chronic disease with which well-treated people could live a normal life.
The final days
Together with his partner, Jens Lauritzen decided to spend his last days at Sct. Maria Hospice Center in Vejle. In the last month and a half before his death, the couple was followed by a TV crew from TV Syd, who made a TV program for TV-2 about choosing hospice as the end of life.
Sources:
- Skive Folkeblad May 22, 1997