At least 3% of Washington, DC residents have HIV or AIDS, according to a CDC-funded report by the George Washington University School of Health and Health Services.

That’s a 22% increase in just 2 years and 3 times the threshold normally reserved for describing a generalized and severe epidemic. 

In black men, the infection rate approaches 7%. The rate is 3% in black women.

“Our rates are higher than West Africa,” Shannon Hader told the Washington Post. Currently director of the District’s HIV/AIDS Office, Hader once ran CDC projects in Zimbabwe.

“We have every mode of transmission,” she added. “Men having sex with men, heterosexual and injected drug use (they’re all) going up.” 

Hader took over 2 years ago. She is the District’s 12th AIDS Office director in 19 years, and the third in last 5.

Half the DC residents with ties to particularly hard hit neighborhoods reported having overlapping sexual partners in the last year, and only 30% reported using a condom the last time they had sex.

Meanwhile, Congress had until last year, prevented the District’s AIDS office from using tax dollars for a needle exchange program.

And the report cautions that “that the true number of (District) residents currently infected and living with HIV is certainly higher” than 3%, because this number is based only on people who’ve gotten tested. 

Mayor Adrian Fenty added that “to solve an issue as complex as HIV/AIDS, you have to step up.  It’s the mayor and other elected officials, but it’s also the community. You have this problem affecting us, and you tell people how serious it is and it literally goes in one ear and out the other.”

When Gilead Sciences agreed to acquire CV Therapeutics for $1.4 billion in cash, the prize was Ranexa, the first totally new anti-angina drug approved for first line therapy in 30 years.

Gilead believes Ranexa can boost its cardiovascular business as it gathers itself to launch its hypertension drug Darusentan, which looks solid late in Phase III.

But unlike other pharmaceutical players that are using acquisition as a primary growth strategy, Gilead also generates growth internally.

California-based Gilead has been on Fortune’s list of Fastest Growing Companies for 3 out of the last 4 years. Its stock has doubled since 2004, and it’s down only 10% since the Feds played Russian roulette with Lehman Brothers and the chamber turned out to be loaded.

The S&P has dropped 47% since then.

The secret to Gilead’s success is a trio of HIV treatments which drove nearly 90% of its $5.3 billion revenues in 2008.

These drugs all leverage Gilead’s proprietary compound, tenofovir, which is prescribed in one form or another for 80% of new HIV patients in the US, and nearly that many in the EU.

New HHS guidelines now list these drugs, and no others, as the preferred backbone therapy for HIV/AIDS.

Patients find Gilead’s one-a-day combo pills, Truvada and Atripla easier to manage, so they’re more likely to stick with the plan and that drives better outcomes.

Gilead also stands to benefit from evidence-driven public policy shifts towards earlier detection and treatment of HIV which will increase the size of the treated population and the duration of therapy.

“Gilead identified the importance of convenience, less frequent dosing, and combination pills earlier than anyone else,” said Geoffrey Porges, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein.

Pope Benedict XVI commands respect and reverence from his flock of 135 million Catholics in Africa, and that showed during his recent visit to Cameroon and Angola.

In response, he delivered a message of compassion and heartfelt recognition that the continent suffers disproportionately from poverty, famine, financial upheaval and climate change.

But he did flub one matter.

When asked to comment about the role of condoms in Africa’s war on AIDS, Pope Benedict stated, again, this time even more explicitly than usual, his belief that they are not just unhelpful in assuaging the epidemic, but that they exacerbate the scourge.

AIDS, he said, can be licked by abstaining from sex and following “correct behavior.”

He said this on a continent where 20 million have already died from AIDS and even more than that are HIV positive.

Certainly condom distribution by itself is not an answer.

Other strategies are required such as education, helping women achieve control over their sex lives, delaying onset of sexual behavior, broadening distribution of antiretroviral therapies and so forth.

But condom distribution programs work. According to the WHO, properly used condoms reduce HIV transmission by 90%. And when Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni talked openly about “ABC” habits—abstain, be faithful, use condoms, infection rates fell in his country.

Conversely, public figures that ignore the facts or get them wrong endanger the lives of many.

Harvard scientists estimated last year for example that that the callous behavior of South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki has caused 330,000 avoidable deaths due to AIDS.

In denying the facts about condoms in AIDS prevention, Pope Benedict turned a cold shoulder to the world’s weakest. That’s the group he should be working hardest to defend.