In April 2003, the National AIDS Council expressed concern about the spread of HIV/AIDS in the overseas departments and called for improvements to the measures in place to combat the epidemic. These difficulties in controlling the epidemic can be attributed to the geographical, economic, social, and cultural characteristics of these departments. The objective of this article is to describe the characteristics of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the overseas departments, in order to better understand the specific features of the epidemic in these regions. (Excerpt from the introduction)