News AIDS Boss for the District

The Washington Business Journal broke the news late last night that the director of the District Department of Health, Gregg Pane, has chosen Marsha Martin, a longtime HIV/AIDS activist and director of the non-profit organization AIDS Action, to head up the city's troubled HIV/AIDS Administration (HAA).

Once the appointment is officially announced, Martin would take the helm of an understaffed government bureaucracy which has been accused of failing to adequately address the HIV/AIDS crisis in the District, which is said to affect 1 in 20 residents. D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, upset over the lack of progress on this issue, fired HAA's director, Lydia Watts, this week, and promised to establish a taskforce to deal with the health crisis.