Continuity mistake: When Don is in the cafe he is wearing a wedding ring then throughout the movie he is not. (02:00:17)
Factual error: At the end of the movie they say that Bill Kraus died on January 26th, 1986 but he actually died on January 11th, 1986.
Continuity mistake: Towards the end of the movie when Don cannot sleep and goes to the cafe where he sees Jim, he enters the cafe and it is dark and raining. A few minutes later during the shots where the camera is on Jim, the window is behind him and you can now see it is very light outside.
Other mistake: When the child takes Don and his colleague to see a pile of Ebola fever victims, the camera lingers on the "corpse" of a man who is breathing.
Chosen answer: It represents a breakthrough in the case - a lead to the original source of the virus, as many of the patients being treated in France were either African or had spent time there. Up until that point, the origin of the virus was a mystery - with the knowledge that the French were treating the same virus, it gave them vital information in backtracking where the virus originated. It also proved that AIDS was a worldwide phenomenon of epidemic proportions, something that a number of agencies had been reluctant to accept up to that point.
Tailkinker ★
This is not an accurate answer. When they say the French had the virus, they don't mean patients with the virus. They mean the French successfully found the virus in blood, which is a necessary step in determining that aids is caused by an infectious agent and the first step in coming up with medication. The French had patients with the virus since about the same time as the us.