WASHINGTON (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Katitia Pitts stands before a small group of people at a health centre in Washington and waves a female condom in the air.

"It squeaks, ... but it protects," she says.

The condoms, which have been on the market for years, have finally been discovered by health officials in Washington, DC, where 3 per cent of the residents are HIV positive -- a rate higher than that in some developing countries.

The city is the first in the country to begin a large-scale offensive using female condoms as a weapon. Half a million condoms are being distributed to women by health officials like Pitts.

"If your partner doesn't want to protect you, you can protect yourselves," she tells her audience at the Christian CATAADA House (Calvary's Alternative to Alcohol and Drug Abuse House) in the impoverished south-eastern quadrant of the US capital.

Giggles ripple through the sparsely furnished, neon-lit classroom as Pitts lays a rubber model of the lower part of a female body on a table to demonstrate how to use the condom -- an 18-centimetre-long plastic tube, equipped with rings on both ends.

The inner, sealed ring is put in the vagina.

"Put the ring in place and pull the condom through the vagina," Pitts explains.

"It has the advantage of being notably less noisy than the previous models," she says with a laugh.

"If you use it one year and sleep with a positive partner, you decrease your infection chance by 90 per cent," she adds.

The AIDS rate is particularly high in this eastern part of the nation's capital. Its residents are poor. White people are seldom seen in this part of town. Women who have used illicit drugs are especially at risk.

Among African-American women aged 25 to 34 years, the leading cause of death is HIV, according to a study conducted in 2008. Eighty per cent of the infections are transmitted by sexual intercourse.

At least every third out of 100 people in Washington is infected -- as many as in parts of Uganda or Kenya.

"Each of us sitting here could get it," Pitts says.

The rate is even higher among African-American men: 6.5 per cent, according to Pitts.

There are multiple reasons for high HIV-positive rates in this neighbourhood, said Pitts' boss, Nannie Johnson.

"There is a lot of poverty, drugs and permissive sex," she said. "Washington is a kind of melting pot. This is where everybody comes."

The actual rate of AIDS cases could be even higher, said Shannon Hader of the city's health department. Not everyone who is a carrier gets tested. Studies of sexual behaviour in the US capital have shown that more than 70 per cent of the men in the areas especially hard-hit by AIDS decline to use condoms.

Health officials have thus banded together to work on various AIDS and health initiatives in order to make progress through women.

A 500,000-dollar donation from the MAC AIDS fund -- founded in collaboration with the funky Canadian-based cosmetic firm -- enabled the city to buy a mountain of female condoms at a discount price and distribute them.

"Anywhere male condoms are available, female condoms will be available," Hader was quoted as saying by the Washington Post.

Numerous high schools and hair salons are involved in the initiative, and pharmacies are selling the female condoms at special prices.

"We don't want DC to be the number one and we don't want African-Americans to be the number one," Pitts said.

Copyright 2010 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH