AIDS and health-policy responses in European welfare states

Article abstract:

This article analyses the complex policy issues set into motion by the AIDS epidemic in Europe. It shows how different health systems responded to the challenge and how the management of an epidemic influenced general trends in health-care policies. AIDS emerged as an ill-structured problem calling into question the central position of the medical profession in policy making, institutional fragmentation in the health sector and the exclusive role of economic factors in policy reform. While the mainstream health services had to adapt to new demands, public-health services had to reinvent themselves to cope with the specific issues around prevention. The analysis thus distinguishes between the well-established medical-care sector and the weakly structured public-health sector. It focuses on the reshaping of policies in this previously neglected field, including at the level of the European Union.