Clearly the new treatment is unsuitable for some patients. So we still need a range of treatments to become available, to compensate for those which, tomorrow or the day after, may prove to be ineffective. There is a risk that people will become less militant because of this new treatment, even though many questions are still not solved. If the public really begins to think that the epidemic is over, we will find it much more difficult to continue our mobilisation, and to deal with a number of social questions which are at the very heart of the AIDS crisis. The central issue for me today is vulnerability.
Contamination happens where there is vulnerability.
If we don't understand this vulnerability, we can't explain why, despite the prevention campaigns, despite the fact that most people know that you must use a condom or a clean needle if you take risks, the number of new infections has hardly dropped in the last 12 months. There were 4,796 new cases of HIV in 1996, only 300 less than in 1995. Homosexuals are vulnerable because it is hard, in France and elsewhere, to admit to being homosexual. Drug users continue to get sick because they are seen as criminals, rather than people who suffer. In Africa, women are more vulnerable to AIDS because they lack weight in society.