Metro Weekly has a great article online profiling Khadijah Tribble. I had the chance to meet Khadijah over coffee a few months back, when she was starting as Interim Director of Pediatric AID HIV Care. It's great to learn more about the important work she's doing.December 1, World AIDS Day, will again mark that sad anniversary that, while a time to tout advances such as an entirely new class of HIV/AIDS medications, primarily reminds Washingtonians that HIV/AIDS is the millstone around our collective neck as we drown in an epidemic. Data released by the Mayor Adrian Fenty's Department of Health on Monday, Nov. 26, doesn't offer much succor.
According to the new HIV/AIDS report, HIV-positive children continue to be born in the District -- nearly a tenth of the country's pediatric AIDS cases in 2005 -- while some states have successfully used medication to eradicate mother-to-child transmission. Nearly 40 percent of new HIV infections are transmitted through heterosexual sex, though sex between men still accounts for 27 percent of new infections. Pointedly, black women, who are 58 percent of the District's female population, account for 90 percent of new female HIV infections in D.C. Possibly the most important point -- and the one everyone was likely expecting -- is that the nation's capital leads the country with its rate of AIDS cases: 128.4 per 100,000 people, versus the national average of 14 cases per 100,000 people.
continue reading this article at Metro Weekly
Despite extensive efforts and improvements nationally in the prevention of HIV/AIDS in children, the District of Columbia continues to have disproportionately high numbers of HIV/AIDS cases among children less than 13 years of age.
