WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington, D.C., has the highest rate of AIDS in the United States, and more babies are born with the AIDS virus in Washington than in other U.S. cities, according to a report released on Monday.

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People living in Washington also are not getting tested for HIV and show up with advanced infections that progress quickly to AIDS, the report by city health officials found.

The report found that Washington, with a population of around 600,000 people, has a rate of 128 AIDS cases per 100,000 people in 2006, compared with a national rate of 14 cases per 100,000. The city accounted for 9 percent of all pediatric AIDS cases in the United States during 2005.

"The District's rate for newly reported AIDS cases is higher than rates in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Detroit and Chicago," the report said.

Of the 12,428 people infected with HIV in Washington, 80 percent are black, the report found. More than 8,300 had fully progressed to AIDS and 224 died of AIDS in 2006.

"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.

Man oh man. I have not researched this in a long time. I used to be aware of the statistics state by state. I need to look at this again. This is scarey.

Kat