Public health and development: AIDS policy of the Community and the Members States in the developing world

The aim of this communication from the Commission was to present the policies of the Community and its Member States on the problem of AIDS in the developing countries. According to the communication, it was expected that, by the year 2000, the virus would have infected 40 million persons, most of whom (80 to 90%) would be inhabitants of the developing countries. The communication proposed ways of helping the populations of those countries to rise to the AIDS challenge and halt the spread of the disease. The main proposed solution was to support prevention efforts as and when necessary, and to that end a number of priority objectives were set: - to enable governments to curb the spread of the disease while preventing discrimination against infected people and their exclusion from society, - to ensure that the health services had the necessary resources to enable them to combat AIDS, - to help reduce the impact of the disease on local economies, and - to increase knowledge of the ways in which AIDS was transmitted. A line in the 1994 Community budget would devote ECU 12.5 million to AIDS prevention in the developing countries.�