World AIDS day; HIV and Gender

Hi readers. On 1st December, the world marked world AIDS day. Therefore, this post is about HIV.

I am writing this post with the assumption that we all know certain things;

1. HIV is transmitted through sexual intercourse with an infected person, through blood transfusion with infected blood, and through an infected mother to her child during childbirth, among other routes of transmission.

2. HIV is not transmitted through mosquito bites, sharing of spoons, toilets, etc.

3. Mother to child transmission of HIV during childbirth and breastfeeding can be prevented. It’s really not that difficult.

4. HIV treatment is freely available.

5. HIV is not a death sentence.

6. No one should stigmatise or discriminate against anyone because of their HIV status (or for any other reason). Stigma is bad. Period.

(NB: On second thought, I know a lot of people do not know not to stigmatize and discriminate. That will be a topic for another day.)

Now that I have written some of the things we all should know, I have to ask, do we know some of the driving forces of the HIV epidemic? Do we know that;