[Psychosocial problems posed by families having an infant infected with the HIV virus or with AIDS].

Since the first cases of infantile AIDS, the "status" of the severely ill child and his or her family has changed. When faced with this "shameful" disease, transmitted by the mother to her child during pregnancy, parents feel compelled to hide their children's disease and to bear the tragic burden of emotional and social isolation. This fatal and untreatable disease, occurring as the result of an unconventional lifestyle, is responsible for progressive neurologic deterioration that makes the child unrecognizable.