hiv/aids in Japan

[2pints-mate 0]

A bit of a heavy topic, sorry, but was just wondering what the situation - both official and not - is with that scurge over in Japan...

 

Anyone enlighten us?

[nzlegend 1]

Yep the March 2003 issue of ' Kansai Time Out' had a great article about this.

It was called a 'Time Bomb in Waiting'

Japan has the fastest growing AIDS problem in Asia. HIV is increasing propogated by Govt incompetence (funnily enough) lack of media attention and public ignorance.

Youths are complacent and and not taking precautions and indulging in 'sekusu tomo' - sex friends -casually organized groups of rotating sex partners.

Its a good article focussing on the ignorance and denial.

 

Stats - number and how they got it

HIV 5121 cases

 

Males 3605 (610 gaijin)

( str8 1224 - Gay 1759)

Infected blood perinatal 624

 

Females 1516 (1090 gaijin)

str8 964 gay 1

other 551

 

AIDS>>> 2549

 

male 2189 (437 gaijin)

(str8 950 - gay 609 others 630)

 

Female 360 (210)gaijin)

str8 207 - gay 2 other 153

 

I am sure the high # of gaijin will cause 100% of the blame to be laid with the filthy dirty gaijin

[sam_casper 0]

here in oz just this week the scientists are doing a trial vaxcen (sp?) for HIV & AIDs.

The way it works is if you have it then get this shot it will fight it off, apparently it is working 100% so far.

It will be avaliable to public in a decade, but they are doing a trial in thailand too i think next year.

 

Sounding pretty positive!

[grungy-gonads 54]

Condoms don't seem to be as "popular" (re: well used) in Japan as many other places. Withdraw!

[Fattwins 0]

The woman here follow the man. I can see why they dont where a condom. My wife never said anything about condoms. Sex education is lacking.

[CherryBoy 0]

Be a cherryboy like me.

[Glen Falting 0]

Those are still pretty low numbers.

 

How do they go about testing a vacine for a dealy disease? Or perhaps a better questions where do they find enough people silly enough to agree to take a unproven vacine and allow themselves to be exposed to a disease that will eventually kill?

[barok 0]

people that would take this vaccine would already have the disease and thus doctors would have no trouble recruiting subjects.

 

I would like to point out that the HIV statistics are are probably wildly innaccurate, as routine HIV testing is not done, most folks don`t go in for testing, and as doctors often advise AGAINST testing.

 

Sexual education here, as in most areas of the world, is lacking.

[Glen Falting 0]

ah, so its not a vaccine then, but a cure(?)

[Karnidge 2]

By all accounts the official stats in Japan are wildly off.

[Glen Falting 0]

And what accounts are those Karnidge? If testing isn't very common how on earth would anyone know what the levels are or how fast the levels are increasing?

[Karnidge 2]

Doctors and health clinics throughout Japan;

AIDS organisations both in and out of Japan;

Alarming proliference of other STDs in young people;

Relatively low usage of condoms;

Behavior of Sex Tours guys

 

etc

etc

[Glen Falting 0]

But apparantly no one is doing very much testing! - If they are, the figures are acurate. If the figures come from all and more of the types of places you've listed then why aren't the figures reliable?

[Karnidge 2]

I'm sure if you put just a little thought into the simple puzzled then you might just work it out. Don't strain yourself too hard though.

[Glen Falting 0]

gee that's a good one.

 

Doctors and health clinics throughout Japan;

NOT A LOT OF TESTING - SO ****ING IDEA

AIDS organisations both in and out of Japan;

GEE AN ORGANISATION PROMOTING ITS CAUSE - A VERY RARE THING INDEED

Alarming proliference of other STDs in young people; AH, YOUNG FELLA YOU HAVE THE CLAP QED - YOU MUST HAVE AIDS AS WELL. THAT PRESUPOSES A HIGH LEVEL OF INFECTION IN THE FIRST PLACE AND IN ITSELF PROVES NOTHING

Relatively low usage of condoms;

Behavior of Sex Tours guys -WHO GET HIV/AIDS FROM COUNTRIES THAT DO HAVE VERY HIGH LEVELS EG THAILAND, CAMBODIA AND OTHER COUNTRIES WITH THIRD WORLD HEALTH CARE.

[Karnidge 2]

 

I did tell you not to strain yourself too much, but never mind.

[Glen Falting 0]

[scoobydoo 0]

For the record, he's making more sense than you are kambei.....

[barok 0]

A vaccine can be a cure - some vaccines are effective after a person becomes infected (rabies for example).

 

Other vaccines are only effective if administered beforehand, due to a variety of reasons - smallpox will kill you too quickly for a vaccine to do any good.

 

As for the accuracy of these figures - I wonder where they came from as well, as Kansai time out, sounds like a weekly or monthly ad reader type of deal, am I wrong ? In any case, it is not a respected medical journal.

 

The way these stats are presented, it looks like these numbers are reported cases and not projected figures, or estimates of any kind. HIV is asypmtomatic, and has a long incubation period before full-blown AIDS results. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that the an estimate of cases would be much higher than the actual number of reported cases, given that HIV/AIDS is a communicable disease spread by sexual contact.

 

Spread by irresponsible sexual contact is another way to say it, and engaging in unsafe sex is something that many Japanese people do, and is certainly something that people with STD`s do or at the very least, have done.

 

As far as AIDS accompanying other STD's it often does, as transmission rates are much higher when there are more than one pathogen in a person's sexual fluids.

[Ocean11 0]

Interesting stuff barok...

 

...so how many times has the doctor recommended you save yourself the Y5,000, and how many times did you take his advice?

[big-will 7]

Interesting stuff indeed.

[rachael 0]

I found this on another news forum, don't know where the source is:

 

-------------------

 

Carefree Japan heading for HIV explosion

June 3, 2003

 

 

Although severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) has not yet been reported on Japan's shores, many people still fear an outbreak of the virus. But at the same time another deadly virus is spreading within the country at a worrying rate while largely going unnoticed -- HIV.

As of the end of March a total of about 8,000 people in Japan, excluding hemophiliacs, were infected with HIV, the virus that can develop into full-blown AIDS. Although this is lower than in many other countries, analysts predict that the number of HIV and AIDS cases will keep rising and could even break through to 27,000 by 2006.

 

Across Japan, a total of 614 people, including Japanese and foreigners, were reported as having contracted HIV last year, according to a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry panel on AIDS. This figure was on the same level as the 621 cases recorded the previous year, but of these cases, the number of Japanese males with the virus reached a record 481.

 

In the three months ending in March this year, a total of 146 new HIV cases emerged, compared with the 139 reported during the same period the previous year, while another 68 people came down with AIDS.

 

While there is a tendency for the rate of infections to decrease in developed countries, data from the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says that in Japan the number of yearly infections has gone against this trend and continued to rise.

 

Shinichi Oka, a research and development worker at the International Medical Center of Japan agrees that the AIDS problem includes Japan, not just distant countries overseas.

 

"Although the problem is not as bad as in South Africa, there is a possibility that the number of cases in Japan will soon increase explosively," he said.

 

What particularly worries Oka is the increase in positive infection results for those who go in for free tests at public health centers. In 2000 a total of 107,266 people took the tests, compared with 108,911 in 2002, but the percentage of positive tests doubled from 0.116 percent to 0.241 percent during this period. In Tokyo's Shinjuku-ku, home to the Kabukicho red light district, the rate climbed from 0.69 percent to 1.113 percent -- more than one out of every 100 people tested.

 

"(These figures were) a shock. It is likely that (the infected people) were previously sexually active and of course they don't know who their partners were," Oka says. "One person infects another, two people infect another two, four people infect four, and so on. Infections probably pass from one person to the other in some cases without either of them knowing about the virus. I think the 900 HIV infections each year is more likely like 3,000.

 

"Once a certain level is reached, the rate accelerates rapidly. That is the scary thing about infections diseases. In Japan the situation is one where a parabola is set to rise on a steep curve," he says.

 

A research team for the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry founded by Masahiro Kihara, a professor in Kyoto University's graduate school of medicine, predicts an alarming increase in the number of cases in Japan over the next few years. The group estimates that the number of HIV patients will rise to 22,000 people by 2006. Including the number of predicted AIDS patients, the total figure will hit 27,000, researchers say.

 

The first HIV and AIDS cases were discovered in Japan in 1985. In the 17 years since then up until the end of March this year, about 8,000 people have become infected in Japan. But if the predictions are correct this figure will more than triple in just 3 1/2 years. "We will not be able to avoid an explosive increase in the near future," a group researcher said.

 

It seems that changes in moral attitudes and misconceptions in society among people who have contracted HIV are partly behind the increase.

 

Although some people may embrace the notion that AIDS is something that happens to people in Southeast Asia, a total of 77.2 percent of the HIV 614 infections recorded last year occurred within Japan. Of these infections, 53.6 percent were through homosexual contact while 33.1 percent passed from one sex to the other. Infections from mother to child through pregnancy accounted for 0.5 percent.

 

By gender men accounted for most of the infections, but restricted to the 15- to 19-year-old group females accounted for 68.8 percent of the infections. In the 20- to 24-year-old group the figure reached 57 percent.

 

In a National Police Agency survey of high school students, whose results were released at the end of last year, more than 50 percent of both high school boys and girls said that the choice of whether a girl the same age should have sexual relations with a person she doesn't know is up to the girl herself. At the same time the number of child prostitution cases that occurred last year though dating sites hit 268, more that 2.3 times that of the previous year.

 

A separate survey by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare found that the number of artificial abortions carried out by women under 20 climbed from 26,117 in 1995 to 46,511 in 2001. The number of issued condoms dropped from 1.1 million to 840,000 during the same period.

 

UNAIDS has criticized Japan in the past for sexual turbulence in the country, pointing out the existence of the phrase "sex friend." But some point out that the rise in AIDS is not caused by sexual disorder alone. Chizuko Ikegami, a former University of Hawaii researcher and a member of the nonprofit Place Tokyo organization supporting infected people, has talked with those who have contracted HIV since 1994. She says that even people who are sincere can become victims.

 

"Even when there is genuine love with the person only having had an experience with one person, there is still a risk of infection," she says. "People should put on condoms in the same way the put on face masks for SARS prevention."

[oo 1]

I have heard a few times of doctors not telling patients of any disease they may have here.

 

Is that really so, and surely that doesnt apply with something like hiv.

 

Anyone know more on that subject?

[Karnidge 2]

Interesting article that.

 

Perhaps Kambei should give it a read through.

 

[akibun 0]

Japanese people must be more careful than is now.