Washington has severe HIV epidemic
Updated: 2007-11-27 09:52
A LITTLE OF EVERYTHING
"We have a lot of transmission going on among heterosexuals, we have a lot of transmission going on with men who have sex with men and we have a lot of transmission among injecting drug users," Hader said in a telephone interview.
Washington has a unique status among US cities. When it was established as the US capital, it was kept apart from states and put under congressional management, although it has an elected mayor and city council.
Hader said the city has adopted a policy of routine HIV testing, which means people should get the test whenever they get a check-up or visit an emergency room.
Currently, people usually have to specifically ask to be tested for HIV.
Hader said the city aimed to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV to zero by 2009 with better testing and treatment of pregnant women. Women who take HIV drugs around the time of delivery are far less likely to transmit the virus to their babies.
Chip Lewis of the Whitman-Walker clinic, an HIV treatment center in Washington, said the report shows the need for universal HIV testing.
"This is a 100 percent preventable disease," Lewis said by telephone. Yet one in 20 adults in Washington has HIV and one in 50 has AIDS, he noted.
"HIV and AIDS has really become a disease that grows in areas of poverty. There is lots of poverty in the District," Lewis said.
The United Nations estimates that 33 million people are infected with the AIDS virus globally, about a million of them in the United States.
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