HIV/AIDS Rate in Washington D.C. Tops West Africa

By: Jackie Jones

Get tested. Know your status and be tested regularly.

That’s the message health experts in Washington, D.C. want to get across, following a report released in last month that revealed at least 3 percent of the city’s residents have HIV or AIDS, a total that exceeds the 1 percent threshold that constitutes an epidemic.

With 2,984 residents per every 100,000 over the age of 12 - or 15,120, according to the 2008 epidemiology report by the District's HIV/AIDS office – that means the city’s rate of HIV/AIDS infection is higher than West Africa’s.

“We think information is power, and every time we release information, we do capture another level of the population who recognize HIV is important to their lives,” said Shannon Hader, M.D., director of D.C.’s HIV-AIDS Administration.

Hader told BlackAmericaWeb.com all but one of the city’s eight wards saw an increase in the transmission of the AIDS virus, meaning it cuts across all racial, socio-economic and gender orientation groups.

The report, she said, caused many people to ask, “What’s the first step I can do to protect my health and move the health of the city forward?”

Hader said many Americans have relaxed because they either think they are not at risk for the disease or that their health care professionals are routinely testing them for HIV/AIDS. Many doctors think they will catch the patients at greatest risk simply by asking them about their sexual history and activity. An HIV/AIDS screening should be as routine as having one’s blood pressure checked. Sexual history should not matter, she said.

“It doesn’t take a lot of partners to be at risk,” she said. “You could have had only one partner, and you didn’t know his HIV status. This is such a common disease that you can’t categorize risk.”

In the African-American community particularly, many straight black men believe that AIDS is still largely a gay white man’s disease, and while the report said that only three in 10 people surveyed said they used condoms, “anecdotally, I would tell you that the number is lower among African-Americans,” said Regina Newkirk, director of development communications and community relations for the Whitman-Walker Clinic.

HIV/AIDS Rate in Washington D.C. Tops West Africa....