AIDS Patients

Number of AIDS patients from the AIDS Control Promotion Council's report. The number of patients is the accumulated total from 1985 to November 2009. 21% of HIV carriers and 20% of AIDS patients in Japan are foreigners living in Japan. However, because there is no report on the number of foreign patients by prefecture, the number of patients indicated is the total number of Japanese and foreign patients.

From Wikipedia:

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in humans in which the immune system begins to fail, leading to life-threatening opportunistic infections. It is often referred to as "AIDS virus" but this is not its official name.

By using HIV vaccines properly, it is possible to suppress the growth of HIV and it effective, to a certain degree, in recovering the patient's immune system and to delay the progression of the disease. Today, HIV infection is becoming a disease that can be controlled over a long period of time.

As above, the situation in which HIV progresses and opportunistic infections appear from decline in the number of immune cells is referred to as AIDS. It was once said to be a deadly disease but due to the progress in therapeutic drugs, patients are able to experience longer life expectancy.

The number of AIDS patients per 100 thousand population is greatest in Tokyo with 11.5. Following Tokyo are Ibaraki (9.1), Nagano (7.5), Tochigi (7.1), Chiba (6.2) and Gunma (5.0). The top 8 prefectures are Tokyo and surrounding prefectures, indicating that there are many AIDS patients in the Kanto area. There have been many HIV carriers in the Kanto area from an early stage, and with the passage of time, carriers are believed to be developing AIDS.