According to a report released by city officials, Washington, the nation's capital city the President and his family call home, which is also a tourist haven, is reported to have the highest rate of HIV-AIDS in the country. The first comprehensive analysis of infection rates in the district reveals 3% of the city's general population has been infected with the virus.

The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention defines epidemic as 1% of the population and Washington's rate of HIV-AIDS infection is thrice that, with almost 1 in 10 of the city's residents aged 40 to 49 having contracted the virus, which spreads three ways through heterosexual sex, homosexual sex and intraveneous drug use.

Jose Vargas, a Washington Post reporter working on a documentary about AIDS in Washington says: 'D. C. is unique in that all of those three transmission rates is high, and they're all in double digits.'

With its high concentrations of most at risk groups i. e. African Americans and gay men, the report on Washington city drives home the point that cutting across all demographics, since 2006, the virus has increased 22% with epidemic proportions in all of the city's neighbourhoods but one.

Health officials blame Washington's high HIV rate on individual behaviors, including the city's haphazard response to the crisis. Shannon Hader, Director of the city's HIV/AIDS Administration, in a cover story for the Washington Post, trying to put the rates into context said: 'Our rates are higher than West Africa. They are on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya.'

Studying the city's HIV-AIDS rates for six years now, Vargas says it did not happen overnight. San Francisco is the only other city that comes close to Washington, D. C.'s current rate of infection, when during the height of the epidemic in the 1990s, San Francisco had a 4% rate of infection.

Thirty years after the epidemic broke out in the United States, there is still a very real stigma attached to Aids, which prevents people from getting tested, meaning Washington's actual rates of HIV-AIDS could probably be much higher.