Oka Shinichi
AIDS Clinical Center, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
Glob Health Med. 2021 Dec 31;3(6):356-357. doi: 10.35772/ghm.2021.01103.
In Japan, HIV testing has been offered anonymously and free-of-charge at local public health centers, together with pre- and post-test counseling since 1993. Since then, the number of HIV tests increased steadily to reach a peak in 2008 but has since decreased by 30% during the last decade. The number of tests further decreased in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and steeply by 50% this year compared with the previous year, mostly due to a shift in the workload at these centers to COVID-19-related services. To deal with this decline and thinking beyond the current pandemic, more options for HIV testing are needed, such as self-testing/postal delivery of dried blood spot specimen, a method that is yet to be approved in Japan, in addition to the conventional plasma/serum-based HIV testing.
在日本，自1993年以来，当地公共卫生中心一直提供匿名且免费的HIV检测，并提供检测前和检测后咨询服务。从那时起，HIV检测数量稳步增加，在2008年达到峰值，但在过去十年中下降了30%。在2020年新冠疫情期间检测数量进一步下降，今年与上一年相比急剧下降了50%，主要原因是这些中心的工作量转向了与新冠疫情相关的服务。为应对这种下降趋势并超越当前的疫情进行思考，除了传统的基于血浆/血清的HIV检测外，还需要更多的HIV检测选项，例如自我检测/干血斑标本邮寄检测，这一方法在日本尚未得到批准。
