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| One Memorable Moment |
Tatsuo Hayashi began his Peace Boat lectures by
letting everyone else do the talking. Hayashi, an HIV expert with
several books to his credit, feels that there is not enough communication
about AIDS and HIV in Japan, and used his lectures as a forum for
generating initial discussions among passengers.
He began by taking a general survey of his audience. Using a show of hands, he asked a few questions about how worried the 300-400 attendees in the ship's Music Salon were about friends and family, including future offspring, becoming HIV positive. The large majority raised their hands. Finally he asked who among the audience was worried about contracting the virus themselves; very few raised their hands.
These results, Hayashi explained, were typical. Many people, especially in Japan, feel that HIV is "someone else's disease" - homosexuals, drug users, those involved in prostitution, etc. While perhaps this was true in the past, it is no longer so. "The AIDS problem of the last 20 years will be much different than that of next 20 years," he said, "especially in Japan."
He described how while the world HIV infection rate is increasing at about 0.4 percent per year, the Japanese infection rate is increasing at 1.14 percent, with 500 new cases of HIV and 300 new cases of AIDS in the country appearing yearly. Hayashi attributed this to a combination of two factors: the reluctance of most Japanese to discuss sexually related topics such as condom use, and the relatively promiscuous Japanese culture (the average Japanese girl has sex with eight partners before marriage).
Hayashi then spoke on the dire HIV conditions abroad, particularly in poorer, underdeveloped nations in regions such as Africa. He described the plummeting average life spans in African countries such as Botswana, Kenya, and South Africa, and how they could be linked directly to soaring infection rates - by some estimates, for example, one in four South Africans is now HIV positive.
The lectures ended with a comparison of the availability of AIDS medicine (inhibitors) in first and third world countries. Hayashi indicated that while 94% of the world's HIV cases are in third world countries, only six percent of AIDS inhibitors ends up in these countries. In addition, the current price of a year of AIDS medicine is currently around U.S. $15,000, well beyond the means of most of the world's inhabitants. |
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| Mombasa-Cape Town
/ Peace Boat's 36th Voyage |
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PEACE BOAT is an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. |
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