TOKYO, JAPAN - A JAPANESE member of parliament who is one of the country's most prominent people living with HIV said on Tuesday that he has married.

Ryuhei Kawada, 32, said he married Mika Tsutsumi, a journalist and anchorwoman.

'I never thought that I would live long,' Mr Kawada said next to his wife at a press conference. 'But for the first time in my life, I've wanted to live long, even a day longer than Mika.'Mr Kawada, a haemophiliac who was infected with HIV through tainted blood, was among plaintiffs who sued the government in 1989 for failing to take action to prevent tainted blood products from being distributed.

Infected with the virus when he was little, Mr Kawada turned into an icon of the court battles because at age 19 he became the first victim to come forward with his real name.

The tainted blood infected 1,430 people with HIV between the late 1970s and 1986, of whom more than 500 have died.

Mr Kawada won a seat in parliament in last year's upper house elections. He ran as an independent, vowing to use his role as a lawmaker to 'fight irresponsible bureaucracy.'

Ms Tsutsumi formerly studied and worked in New York, where she became known for her writing about the Sept 11 terrorist attacks and about poverty in the United States.

An estimated 33.2 million people, in a range from 30.6 to 36.1 million, are living with AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it, the specialised UN agency UNAids says. -- AFP