ABSTRACT
Finally, no reader will need to be reminded of the impact of AIDS. The most complex public health challenge confronting modern society, AIDS has raised basic questions about the rights of individuals versus those of society, about the role of governments, and about the nature of societal responses. The HIV epidemic came at a very inconvenient time indeed, when many countries are having to reduce or freeze their expenditure on health care and on social services. The Global AIDS Policy Coalition has noted that since the beginning of the 1990s there has been a growing gap between the increasing size of the AIDS pandemic and the scale of the response (Mann et al. 1992). Most governments are reducing their financial commitment to AIDS, and the political priority afforded the disease is declining.
