Linking HIV / AIDS to development.

This paper explores how development creates understandings of HIV/AIDS through its paradigms, institutions and its diverse cast of experts. It is noted that to create effective HIV/AIDS prevention programs and projects, an extensive list of development concepts and their hidden assumptions need to be identified and subsequently explored. This paper focuses on an examination of the concepts of statistics, need and poverty in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is noted that in the concept of statistics, identities are created through numbers, hence, the list of indicators in the area of HIV prevention is long and continues to increase as more research is undertaken. In terms of the concept of need, it identifies specific requirements for HIV prevention initiatives and programs. The concept of poverty, one of the most common discourses of development, works to organize, distort and mislead HIV prevention decisions. Overall, it is recommended that other concepts need to be recognized in order to understand HIV/AIDS in broader terms than development economics. These include information, education, and communication concept, behavior change, harm reduction and even the term HIV/AIDS epidemic.