Hence the upsurge of the orphan population and the crisis that this brings about. When the people of Japan awoke on the morning of 7 August 1945, they did not know that that was to be a day of catastrophic doom for one of their cities. It was on that day that an atom bomb devastated Hiroshima, taking 92,000 lives. The number of new HIV infections is believed to lie between 300 and 500 per day. Since then the epidemic has spread to all parts of the country.
Some parts are worse hit than others, but no part is exempt.
The current estimate is that one out of every five of those between the ages of 15 and 49 is infected. This amounts to almost 1,000,000 infected adults. The Ministry of Health's sober estimate is that almost all of these people will die within the next ten years, with the number of deaths due to AIDS rising from its current 200 per day to nearly 350 per day by 2005. Meanwhile, the number of new HIV infections is believed to lie between 300 and 500 per day. This is no longer leading to an increase in the prevalence rate because the rising number of AIDS deaths is offsetting the number of new infections.