A nearly decade-long ban on city funding for needle-exchange programs in Washington D. C. was lifted Wednesday, in an effort to reduce increasingly high rates of HIV and AIDS infections in the nation’s capital.

President George W. Bush signed legislation on Wednesday lifting the nine-year ban, which Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city's congressional delegate, called a factor in the elevated AIDS rate in Washington.

The $555 billion federal spending bill includes a provision allowing the city to spend its own money on programs that provide clean hypodermic needles to drug users, the Associated Press reports.

Federal spending packages dating back to 1998 had blocked such programs. Washington has been the only city where federal law blocked the use of municipal money for needle exchanges.

The nation’s capital has the highest rate of AIDS infection of any major city in the country. The New York Times quotes a recent report by D.C. which shows that intravenous drug users’ sharing of needles is the second-leading cause of HIV transmission, after unprotected sex.

The AP quotes Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who said in a statement that the city plans to include needle exchanges in a larger program to reduce AIDS and HIV infections.

Approximately $1 million will be devoted to the exchanges.

The study, released in November, shows that about 128 of every 100,000 Washington residents have AIDS, compared with 14 cases per 100,000 people nationwide, the wire agency adds.

The report also showed that the city’s black population presents the highest rates, with HIV and AIDS spreading the fastest among black women. D. C. estimates about 20 percent of transmissions are between intravenous drug users who share unhygienic needles.

Needle-exchange programs function on a simple basis: drug users are given clean needles in return for their used syringes. These programs attempt not only to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS, but of other transmittable diseases as well, such as hepatitis.