Some social and health policy requirements for the prevention of AIDS

Given the present circumstances and considering the foreseeable development of medical knowledge, the primary prevention of AIDS is the sole field of health policy in which the spreading of the disease and the subsequent number of victims can be reduced. AIDS prevention as a time-stable behaviour control in potentially risky situations is therefore primarily a task which has to be tackled in a social scientific manner. It has to be handled on the basis of available medical knowledge of infectious disease situations. Viewed realistically, the prospective goal is not the elimination of the disease, but the greatest possible reduction and minimization of risk, both individually and epidemiologically. Proceeding from realistic estimates of the desired and undesired effects of health policy measures, this principle is being applied through the strategy (achieved through informational campaigns) of encouraging the use of condoms when having sexual intercourse in non-monogamous relationships and of informing intravenous drug abusers of the need to employ sterile hypodermic needles. Elements of this preventive strategy are discussed under four central questions: What should/must be learn? Who should/must learn? What objective and subjective factors facilitate or hinder this learning? How can this learning process most optimally be organized? The efficiency-reducing interference of other kinds of strategies (e.g. orientation toward zero risk concepts, repression, and mass screening for HIV-anti-bodies) is thereby worked out.