When we last checked in on the state of HIV/AIDS in the District last August, things were looking rather grim.

A report published by the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice lambasted the District’s efforts to deal with a severe HIV/AIDS crisis in the city, noting that the District remained some 10 to 15 years behind where it should be in mounting a defense against the disease. Shockingly, the report found that the District’s rate of infection, 1 in 20, ranked the city 11th in the world in prevalence of HIV. Dr. Philippe Chiliade, medical director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, similarly admitted that the District’s AIDS rate was ten times the national average. So bad had gotten the situation that D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams was forced to dismiss Lydia L. Watts from her position as head of the city’s HIV/AIDS Administration (HAA), replacing her with Marsha Martin, a former HIV/AIDS activist.

Today D.C. Appleseed released a follow-up report that measures the progress made in the fight against HIV/AIDS since last August. All told, the report card notes that while some improvements have been made, much is left to be done, stating:

Since the release of DC Appleseed’s report, there has been a surge of constructive energy in the District–within and outside the government–devoted to addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Even with that constructive energy, much remains to be done to produce the needed results–as the individual grades on DC Appleseed’s HIV/AIDS report card reflect.

While the District showed relative improvement in leadership, grants management, rapid testing, public schools, syringe exchange programs, and the HAA’s website, little movement was apparent on routine HIV testing and the collection of HIV/AIDS data from the city’s incarcerated population. The areas in which the District was graded lowest were on condom distribution and substance abuse treatment, while progress on publicly available HIV data and the staffing of the office charged with tracking HIV/AIDS was listed simply as “Incomplete.”

D.C. Appleseed has stated that it will issue another report this Fall tracking the progress on the fight against HIV/AIDS in the District.