Aids

Abstract

"Since I was asked last summer to contribute an article for the "FRATERNAL" about AIDS a mass of articles, booklets, letters, radio and TV programmes on this subject has appeared. Almost daily more information drops through my letterbox and my file on AIDS grows thicker each week. Early this year every household received a Government Information leaflet "AIDS - don't die of ignorance", and few can have missed the dramatic TV information slots. "AIDS and Employment", "Protect Your Health Abroad", "AIDS and the Blood Donor", "Children at School and AIDS', "AIDS, What Everyone Needs to Know", "AIDS- Its Significance for First-Aiders", and many more have been published and distributed. Phone lines and addresses for further information on various aspects of the disease are given almost in profusion. So the original intention of this article to provide factual information is possibly now out of date. We have all been the target of an unprecedented health education campaign. Alistair Cooke in his "Letter from America" radio prqgramme tells us that the Americans are impressed by our campaign ~'and are planning to follow suit - extraordinary when you consider that the epidemic began in the USA some years before occurring in this country and has reached much larger proportions! If the public (you, me and all the others) are well informed the risk of AIDS spreading may be reduced, but information alone is never enough. Attitudes must changebehaviour then may alter and the potential epidemic of this untreatable condition over the next decade may be averted. Yes, AIDS could become epidemic, particularly if the treatment to reverse the immune deficiency remains unknown"