[Education for the prevention of AIDS. Government campaigns and/or sel-help organizations for at-risk groups]

Even if we do not have enough distance to comparatively evaluate the preventive actions against AIDS implemented in North America, a few remarks about the respective activities of governments and private sector can be made: Up to 1986, governments have had problems with targeting information campaigns as they were mainly dealing with risk groups and not with risk behaviours. Consequently the effectiveness of such national campaigns was very limited, as politicians had little enthusiasm to involve resources for marginal populations. Therefore, these populations had to try and organize themselves to find the information on AIDS and to disseminate it. This has been possible only in North American big cities where these groups already had an identity. Now that national consciousness has been raised, the role of health professionals is a key one, i.e. to protect the interests of these groups against the pressure of the general public which is reflected in national programmes.