By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jan 6 1999 (IPS)

Japan documents a steadily rising number of AIDS and HIV cases each year, but analysts say public awareness of the pandemic is so low it ranks lowest among industrialised nations.

“Instead of trying to acknowledge the risk they might face, most people, especially the young, in Japan continue to see AIDS as a disease that does not concern them,” says Shigeru Hiramatsu of the Japan HIV Centre, which is active in education and counseling on HIV and AIDS.

According to the government, 554 new HIV cases were reported during the first 10 months of 1998. Last year 631 new cases were registered.

Some 38 percent of the total number of HIV and full-blown AIDS cases in Japan, or 7,413, are in their twenties. Males comprise 60 percent of this figure. Hemophiliacs, infected with contaminated blood, numbered about one-third of the total.

Certainly, these figures are low compared to industrialised countries with more serious HIV/AIDS problems. While that is good news, it is also a key reason why the public tends to ignore the situation, explains Hiramatsu.

Kazuko Ishida of the Ministry of Health and Welfare says Japan ranks the lowest among industrialised countries when it comes to AIDS awareness.

“The media has not raised the issue for a long time despite the AIDS threat faced by more and more young people in Japan, as the rising numbers indicate,” she explained.

Still, some novel efforts are being tried to try to generate more attention to the pandemic and how to deal with it.

For instance, much attention was stirred in July last year about a three-month long television drama that featured a high school girl who contacted HIV through prostitution.

The immensely popular drama deals with the new wave of teenage prostitution in Japan, where more and more high school girls are reported to be having sex with middle-aged men for money.

Health centres say it was a rare public HIV warning that helped boost HIV testing rates. A total of 18,561 tests were conducted from July to September, compared to 9,444 tests during the three months previous to that.

“The drama played a vital role because it helped bring the disease into the open, an important process in the prevention of AIDS,” explained Nagoya Sawa, of UNICEF Japan.

UNICEF Japan, along with the Health and Welfare Ministry and other non-governmental organisations, are pushing a campaign that calls for more open education and community debate on AIDS.

The campaign, called the AIDS Theme group, operates in Japan under the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and focuses on the importance of changing attitudes and promoting education in AIDS prevention.

“AIDS must not been seen as a fearful and terrible disease but something that can be controlled and prevented through education. This is the battle that must be won,” explained Sawa.

Many analysts say the biggest obstacle in Japan to raising awareness is the taboo on open discussion about sex in society.

“One of the most important things that hit me when I watched the recent television drama was that sex was openly discussed. That is not common in our homes,” said Hideo Nakajima, 25, a college student.

In fact, sex education is still a recent introduction in the Japanese school curriculum, and AIDS counselors complain that the subject is not taught frankly or well enough for schoolchildren to understand it.

Thus, the Japan HIV Centre started this year its own programmes to educate high school children, offering sex education in schools after consulting with teachers.

“There are teachers who do not explain with visuals such as how to put on a condom, because they feel embarrassed. This is not the way sex education should be conducted,” said Hiramatsu.

The Tokyo Metropolitan government also acknowledges that news letters and information on AIDS do not include awareness programmes for youth or school children — missing out on young people among whom HIV infections are growing particularly fast.

The World Health Organisation says more than half of all new HIV infections occur among young people aged 15 to 24 years old, and that increasingly “the HIV epidemic will only be slowed by preventing infections among people.

“We have not concentrated our efforts toward young people despite the risk,” said a spokeswoman who deals with HIV prevention policy.

Surveys indicate that more young people begin sexual relations at high school level. “The fact that more people in their twenties are testing positive means that these people were infected when they were in their teens,” explained Hiramatsu.

The AIDS Prevention Centre, affiliated with UNICEF Japan, says the biggest risk is among young people as sexual relations are beginning at earlier ages.

“Campaigns for youth must be the new focus,” commented Teiji Sasaki of the centre. It promotes awareness through information distributed to major organisations including the Tokyo metropolitan government.

The availability of pornographic videos and sexually explicit magazines and comics at regular book stores is also a factor that encourages unsafe sex among youngsters.

Finally, there is the social stigma that prevents those with HIV from seeking help, and blocks open discussion about it.

Volunteers say this fear of discrimination is another reason why AIDS continues to be a “hidden” disease in Japan, a situation that does not augur well for developing greater awareness among young people.

Excerpt: