Washington D.C. a hotbed for AIDS

Nov 27 2007

According to a recently released report Washington, D.C. has the highest rate of AIDS in the United States.

The report also reveals that more babies are born with the AIDS virus in Washington than in other U.S. cities.

The report was carried out by city health officials and it found that Washington's population of around 600,000 people, had a rate of 128 AIDS cases per 100,000 people in 2006, compared with a national rate of 14 cases per 100,000.

The report is the first to look at the HIV/AIDS epidemic specifically in Washington.

The city accounted for 9 percent of all pediatric AIDS cases in the United States during 2005.

Health officials say people living in Washington are not having tests done for HIV and subsequently appear with advanced infections that rapidly progress to AIDS.

Washington's rate for newly reported AIDS cases is higher than Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Detroit and Chicago, and of the 12,428 people infected with HIV in Washington, 80 percent are black and the disease is growing at an alarming rate in the black community.

The report says by 2006 more than 8,300 had fully progressed to AIDS and 224 had died of AIDS with heterosexual contact the leading method of HIV transmission in 37 percent of newly reported infections, while nationally men who have sex with men lead new transmissions.

Almost 70 percent of all people with HIV developed full-blown AIDS within a year, which means they were diagnosed years after having been infected compared to 39 percent nationally.

Health officials also say that in 2004 the number of new HIV cases among men and women ages 40 to 49 also began to rise, outpacing every other age group in the city.

Dr. Shannon Hader of Washington's Department of Health says the report does not examine the reasons why Washington so affected by HIV but it is clear there is a lot of transmission between heterosexuals, between men who have sex with men and among injecting drug users.

Washington's unique status among U.S. cities has kept it apart from states and put it under congressional management, and although the city has adopted a policy of routine HIV testing people usually have to specifically ask to be tested.

Hader says the city aims to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV to zero by 2009 with better testing and treatment of pregnant women.

Experts say the report shows the need for universal HIV testing and while it is a preventable disease, 1 in 20 adults in Washington has HIV and 1 in 50 has AIDS.

They say HIV/AIDS has become a disease that grows in areas of poverty and such is the case in Washington.

The United Nations estimates that 33 million people are infected with the AIDS virus globally, about a million of them in the United States.