AIDS in JAPAN -Basic Information and Coomunity Activities in Japan

HIV/AIDS and news reports

1. Social concern over AIDS

In the advanced information society, mass media, which is a social device to cover unexpected incidents, accidents and unprecedented phenomena as news, has been also required to constantly deliver significant pending issues by the successive means and in just enough quantity, at the same time.

Moreover, it is one of the other important role of the mass media to bridge the gap between international issues and domestic general social concern in a globalizing world.

From this view point, it is difficult to say that Japanese media coverage on HIV/AIDS has made significant achievement, although it can be admitted that certain efforts have been made. This has generated one of the main reasons why social concern over AIDS remains in lower level, despite of the increasing numbers of the HIV infection and developed AIDS in Japan.

On the review of the past coverage on AIDS in Japan, there were several periods when a lot of reports was flooded with AIDS as if "AIDS boom" has come.

2. THE AIDS boom

On March 17, 1987 in Kobe, a Japanese female was, for the first time, reported as an AIDS patient. Since then, Japan experienced 'AIDS panic' for about three months from the fear of HIV infection by heterosexual intercourse, and newspapers and TV programmes continuously delivered AIDS issues.

In fall 1991, well-known were successively reported in connection with AIDS, such as a professional basketball player, Magic Johnson declaring retirement due to HIV infection in the United States, and Freddie Mercury, a member of British rock group "Queen" died of AIDS. Furthermore, from around that time until 1992, the number of HIV infection reports regarding women from South East Asia working in Japanese sex industry dramatically increased, and AIDS again became a headline in newspapers, TV and magazines for almost one year.

3. From Yokohama...

In summer 1994, the 10th International AIDS Conference was held in Yokohama, and the media coverage on the issues has increased.

Subsequently in 1996, the HIV suit reached conciliation between Japanese government, a pharmaceutical company and hemophiliac patients, who were infected with HIV due to the use of blood coagulum in the 1980s and thus made the law suit, in the form of patients' substantial win. This caused a drastic increase in the HIV/AIDS coverage, and major domestic newspapers covered approximately 1,400 articles per paper (4 articles per day on average) in 1996.

However, in between 1994 and 1996, there were few articles about AIDS, it can be found that the AIDS coverage had been undergoing a huge wave of ups and downs.

4. AIDS as "a chronic disease"

In reverse to the upward tendency of domestic HIV infection, since 1997, long-term decreasing trend of coverage on AIDS has continued. As this backdrop, it can be thought that the methods of using the anti-retrovirus drugs as one of the Fixed Dose Combination cure were prevailed, so domestic people with HIV got to be able to expect themselves to live much longer, and the impression as if the settlement of the suit for HIV chemical poisoning would resolved all Japanese AIDS problems was spreading over the society.

As another factor, it is believed that although AIDS has been expanding, the percentage of HIV positive in Japan has been under 0.01%, the possible epidemic level has been still very low, receivers have been a little fed up with the repeat of message to enlighten about AIDS and the central government now has negative attitude towards AIDS measures affect on these trends.

Internationally, since 2000, many countries' leaders including developed countries' have deepen their recognition about the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in developing countries, mainly in Africa as a crisis, and a fight aginst HIV/AIDS at has drawn global attentions. On the contrary, this issue has only drawon partial concern in Japan.

Remembering this, and the fact that the targets and actions stipulated in the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS had not been sufficiently reflected, it will be difficult for the revised Guideline to fully demonstrate its effectiveness as a National Guideline. What is truly needed now, is to put the articles stated in the Guideline into action, and to include the targets of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS in order to galvanize the fight against HIV/AIDS in Japan. For this, full participation of civil society will of course be essential.

In such a circumstance, it is increasingly necessary to make such arrangements as series of features, aiming at looking into the prevalence of HIV/AIDS as "serious and long-term agenda", in order for media to play its role of "agenda setting", which shows the existence of unnoticed developing crisis and draws social attention.

At last, it is worthy to note that it is important to make efforts in the fields surrounding media such as;

Translate English documents into Japanese and release on the internet in order to fill the inter/national information gap, and set up of a public framework available for mass media and researches:
Expand the method of the expression including the art genre to overcome routinized messages:
Continuously increase transparency in HIV/AIDS issues through conferences and events, based on trusted relationship with NGOs, researchers and groups of HIV positives.

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