According to a report due for release Monday from city health officials, cited by The Washington Post, at least 3% of Washington, D.C., residents are HIV positive. Washington’s rate of infection with HIV-AIDS is three times the definition of an epidemic, which is 1 percent of the population.

The report is based on the results of a 2007 study that discovered the epidemic had moved from affecting a mostly gay population to a general one.

“This is very, very depressing news, especially considering HIV's profound impact on minority communities,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health's program on infectious diseases, as quoted by the Associated Press.
African Americans and gay men are the groups most at risk, according to the report.

The HIV rate in Washington is higher than in West Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa is considered the epicenter of the global malady, accounting for more than two thirds of all people living with HIV globally.

Shannon Hader, director of the District's HIV/AIDS Administration told the newspaper that every mode of transmission, from men having sex with men, to heterosexual and injected drug use, is on the rise.

Some fear that the efforts to fight the malady could be affected by the global financial crisis. Despite all these economic problems, the world has the responsibility to “make sure that four million people who are on (HIV) treatment will continue to have treatment, six million more will have access to treatment…,” the newly appointed head of the U.N. agency UNAIDS said a speech earlier this year.