I am a family physician and I have been treating patients affected by HIV since I was a medical student in the 1990s. I wanted to emphasize that HIV/AIDS is still killing people, even though we have medications available that can slow the progress of the disease and emphasize that people need to be tested. People need to know their status in order to prevent the spread of the disease and to receive appropriate treatment. That is why I wrote this song.

Lyrics

What You Don't Know...:
Chorus:
What you don't know...Can kill you (lack of understanding brings consequences) {repeat 4x}

Verse:
HIV is the human immunodeficiency virus that can result in AIDS, the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome that results in the weakening of the immune system leading to an inability to fight off certain infections and death. The virus is transmitted either during unprotected sex, through the blood, in breast milk or during pregnancy or birth from an infected mother to their child. Many people infected with HIV do not realize that they have become infected, because
they do not feel ill immediately after infection. The only way to determine whether HIV is present in a person's body is by testing for HIV.

Chorus:
What you don't know...Can kill you (lack of understanding brings consequences) {repeat 4x}

Verse:
According to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, an estimated 33 million people were living with HIV in 2007. There were 2.7 million new HIV infections and 2 million AIDS-related deaths last year. Globally, women account for half of all HIV infections. The latest data collected from 64 countries indicate that fewer than 40% of young people have basic information about HIV. New HIV infections continues to outstrip the advances made in treatment numbers...for every two people put on antiretroviral drugs, another five become newly infected.

Chorus:
What you don't know...Can kill you {repeat}

Outro:
It's time to get tested....
It's time to know know status.
What you don't know can truly kill you.