Is likelihood of HIV infection really so small?

According to Wikipedia:

"In high-income countries, the risk of female-to-male transmission is 0.04% per act and male-to-female transmission is 0.08% per act. For various reasons, these rates are 4 to 10 times higher in low-income countries."

As far as I know heterosexual contact is the main way of spreading, especially in Africa. A rate of 0.04% to 0.4% would mean that only 1 in 250-2500 times someone with HIV would have sex he would actually transmit the illness. Since the average person has much less sex partners the HIV rate would have to decline, right ?

The source wikipedia has this from is The Lancet one of the most reputable medial journals.

First of all, wikipedia is not always right.
Second of all, statistics like that don't really work with disease transmission.
I'll give you an example. Lets say you have a town with 10000 people, one of whom has aids. Then the odds of getting it is fairly small.
what if you live in a town of 1000 people? What if 5 people have aids?

Millions of people in the world have this disease, and due to the weakening information campaigns less people really think about it. Most symptoms of HIV infection don't manifest for a long time, so you could get it, and pass it on to your partners for years before any symptoms appear.

The likelihood of infection is a lot higher than you think, or what wikipedia says.

The disease you really should be worrying about is hepatitis C
it is spread the same way but is far more prevalent in today's society. You are more likely to die from hepatitis C then you are from HIV/AIDS
HIV is spread more in the gay community and in developing countries
HIV is more of a disease than a terminal illness nowadays with all the treatments that are out on the market

Yes its very small. The CDC, which is the best source for things like this even says. The chance for a female to pass to a male HIV is around in 1 in 1000, unproteceted sex of course. Think about it there are so many people having sex with hiv, some know they have it others dont, but one of these people are bound to get infected, and the process continues.

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