Vulnerability can be personal or societal.
It is impossible to understand personal vulnerability without addressing the contextual factors related to social vulnerability. The fact that injection drug users face a high risk of HIV infection is, to a significant degree, the result of the criminal status of drug use in Canadian law, a legislated form of discrimination against drug users. All people living with HIV experience stigma and discrimination in some form or other. When people discover that they are HIV-positive, one of the first things they have to decide is whether to tell family and friends. Hearing negative comments about people with HIV really eats away at me.