ABSTRACT
In the late 1980s Jonathan Mann, who was at the time the Director of the World Health Organization’s Global Programme on AIDS, suggested that it is possible to distinguish between at least three phases of the AIDS epidemic in any given community-three phases that are so distinct that they can be described as three different epidemics. The first is the epidemic of HIV infection that silently enters the community and often proceeds almost unnoticed. The second epidemic, after a delay of a number of years, is the epidemic of AIDS itself: the syndrome of infectious diseases that can occur because of HIV infection. Finally, the third (perhaps most potentially explosive) epidemic is the epidemic of social, cultural, economic and political reactions to AI DS —reactions that, in Mann’s words, are ‘as central to the global AIDS challenge as the disease itself’ (see Mann, 1987; Panos Institute, 1988, 1990; Sabatier, 1988).
