More than two decades after the first case of AIDS in a Japanese patient was officially reported by the health ministry's National AIDS Surveillance Committee in 1985, HIV/AIDS seems to have become a disease of the past. With much less media coverage, people have become complacent about the issue, experts say.
"In recent years, almost no media come to cover our AIDS Day campaign, which we hold every year on World AIDS Day (Dec. 1)," said Yasushi Sawazaki, director of the Program Operation Section at the Japan Foundation for AIDS Prevention.
While the total number of newly reported HIV positive people and AIDS patients are still low in Japan compared with other countries, the number of newly HIV-infected people in Japan has doubled in the past decade.