Bleeding Fabulous

“An amazing book… Buy his book!”

Mark Ward is fifty-five years young and lives near Brighton. He was born with severe haemophilia and grew up in Hertfordshire—where he was the first severe haemophiliac to attend a ‘normal’ school, enabling special needs education to be established. At school and in hospital, he was often given other people’s opinions regarding his chosen career in aviation. But this never stopped him from dreaming, and then proving them all wrong: he joined the British Airways Youth Training Scheme at sixteen. He worked within the airline across a variety of departments on the ground and in the air, before his health declined and he medically retired.

Mark then became the ‘Door Whore’ for G-A-Y at the London Astoria, working with some huge stars and even performing as a drag queen. He’s been an HIV and LGBTQ+ activist for over thirty years and has volunteered for charities including Terence Higgins Trust, the West Midlands Lesbian & Gay Switchboard and Open Door in Brighton. In 2004, he addressed the World Federation of Haemophilia Congress in Bangkok with his ground-breaking booklet ‘You Don’t Have to be Straight to Take Factor 8’; he was then asked to join the newly-established Tainted Blood Committee in 2006, and has since become an experienced campaigner, media representative and core participant in the Infected Blood Inquiry.

In 2013 he created the support network Haemosexual for those with a bleeding disorder who identify as LGBTQ+ to provide sexual health education and tackle stigma. He’s been an active member of The Haemophilia Society for more than twenty-five years and in 2019, he became the world’s first ever LGBTQ+ Ambassador for Haemophilia.