ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the institutional, policy and epidemiological context in Switzerland, and also presents an aggregate view of the management of HIV/AIDS. It focused on data selected from the inventory of the Swiss organizations active in managing AIDS. The chapter summarizes the development and functioning of the organizational responses to HIV/AIDS on a national level and in the five selected cantons and then presents a synthesis of the organizational response to HIV/AIDS in Switzerland. The Swiss federal structure gives a large autonomy to cantons and municipalities. This not only gives much responsibility to cantonal and local authorities in the field of HIV/AIDS, but it also has an influence on the activities of all HIV/AIDS organizations, be they public or non-profit. In the five largest Swiss towns — Zurich, Basel, Geneva, Bern, and Lausanne —organizations with HIV/AIDS programmes exist, that is about one-third of all HIV/AIDS organizations identified in Switzerland.
