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“Like hell:” Japan’s medical care is in turmoil as the Olympics approach

“Like hell:” Japan’s medical care is in turmoil as the Olympics approach

 


Tokyo – Suffering from breathing, Shizue Akita had to wait more than six hours while paramedics were looking for a hospital to treat the worsened COVID-19.

When she finally reached something that was not overwhelmed by other patients, doctors diagnosed severe pneumonia and organ failure and sedated her. Mr. Akita (87) died two weeks later.

“The medical system in Osaka has collapsed,” said his son Kazuyuki Akita. From his home north of Tokyo, he has seen three other families in Osaka dealing with the virus and inadequate medical care. “It’s like hell.”

The hospital in Osaka, which is the third largest city in Japan and only two and a half hours by bullet train from Tokyo, the venue of the Summer Olympics, is full of coronavirus patients. Approximately 35,000 people nationwide (twice as many as hospitals) have to stay home with the disease, often become seriously ill and sometimes die before receiving medical care.

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As the number of incidents surges in Osaka, healthcare professionals say that every corner of the system is slowing down, growing, and burdening. And that’s happening in other parts of the country.

Frustration and fear are evident in Associated Press interviews with besieged health care workers and families of patients in Osaka. This argues that the July Games will be safe and orderly, even as the state of emergency spreads to more parts of the country and more and more citizens demand cancellation. This is in sharp contrast to the tone of the capital city of Tokyo. ..

Officials, and some consider Osaka to be a warning of what could happen to other parts of Japan if the crisis worsens while the world is concentrating on the Olympics.

Akita told AP in writing that the struggle in Osaka was a “man-made disaster,” as authorities lifted the initial state of emergency, despite signs of recovery from the infection. He thinks the mother might have been alive if she had been treated earlier.

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Many here are amazed at what is happening. After all, Japan is the world’s third-largest economy and has managed pandemics better than many other developed countries. However, the current surge has sent daily aggregates of sick and dying to new highs.

The turmoil is most noticeable in Osaka.

Paramedics are unable to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation because they are wearing protective equipment and need to be very careful to avoid exposure to aerosols, officials and healthcare professionals said. Said. Disinfecting the ambulance takes an hour after the COVID-19 patient is on board, preventing paramedics from rushing to answer the next call.

According to health professionals, emergency patients happen to receive only available treatments, not treatments that are most likely to increase their chances of survival.

For example, a patient suffering from heart failure may be rejected by an advanced emergency hospital, and a critically ill child may find a children’s hospital because it is full, according to an Osaka paramedic who only claims to be his name. I couldn’t. , Because he is not allowed to talk to the media. He said the child died later.

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“Our job is to take dying and deteriorating people to the hospital. In the current situation, we can’t even do our job.”

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has expressed his support for the change of government amid a surge in incidents and prolonged emergency measures. He claims that Japan will host the Olympics safely, but polls show that 60% to 80% oppose the promotion of the Olympics.

So far, there are no signs that the Olympics will be cancelled. The International Olympic Committee, which closed the final planning session with the organizers of the Tokyo Olympics on Friday, reiterated that they were on the way.

However, IOC senior member Richard Pound said in an interview with Japan’s Jiji Press that the deadline for canceling it is “until the end of June.” The pound reiterated that, as the IOC said, if the Olympics are not held this summer, the Olympics will be canceled and will not be postponed again.

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Japanese medical groups say they cannot meet the potential health needs of the Olympics as pressure on coronavirus treatment increases and healthcare workers and government officials are accelerating the rollout of slow-moving vaccinations. I will. Less than 2% of the total population is fully vaccinated.

As the pace of vaccination gradually accelerates, the government plans to open two large vaccination centers on Monday using Moderna Shot, one of the two new vaccines expected to be approved on Friday. ..

This week, Osaka passed Tokyo, the largest city in the United States with the highest number of virus deaths, with 2,036 people. Of the approximately 15,000 patients in Osaka, only about 12% landed in hospitals, and the rest had to wait at home or at a hotel. According to police statistics, the number of deaths from COVID-19 outside the hospital in April tripled from March to 96, including 39 in Osaka and 10 in Tokyo.

The number of daily cases and deaths in Japan is low by world standards, and Japan has the largest number of beds per capita in the world.

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So why do you have a hard time?

This is partly because unprofitable COVID-19 treatment is limited to public hospitals, which are only about one-fifth of the 8,000 hospitals in Japan. Private hospitals, many of which are small, are hesitant or unprepared to deal with cases of coronavirus.

The government also drastically reduced the number of regional health centers, which are key to infectious disease prevention, from about 850 in the 1990s to 469 in 2020, causing bottlenecks due to staff shortages and overwork.

According to data from the Ministry of Health, less than 5% of Japan’s approximately 1.5 million beds are reserved for COVID-19 treatment, up from less than 1,000 in April last year, but that’s not enough.

Due to the recent surge, there are serious cases where hospital beds fill up quickly.

More than half of the approximately 55 coronavirus deaths at Osaka City Jusou Hospital were due to the recent surge, said Dr. Yukio Nishiguchi, the director of the hospital. “It’s like a disaster,” he said.

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Hirofumi Yoshimura, the governor of Osaka Prefecture, who was criticized for being too late, said he regrets not being able to predict a higher-than-expected surge in serious incidents.

Yoshimura admitted that the health care system in Osaka was terribly tense, but said that patients were properly categorized by health centers and that home-based patients stayed there “with consent.”

Patients with mild symptoms but need to be hospitalized should stay at home or in a hotel because the beds in severe cases are full. And people in need of other non-coronavirus treatments are also suffering.

Naoki Hodo, a funeral director in southern Osaka, said paramedics refused to send an ambulance to his 85-year-old aunt in April and told her family to call back if they found a hospital on their own. His aunt had badly swollen eyes and hadn’t eaten for two days.

It took six hours of a family’s desperate call to the hospital on the list given by the operator before they found it. The aunt is still in the hospital and her doctor says she may never see her in one eye again.

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Nishiguchi, who specializes in colorectal cancer surgery, said the pandemic reduced or postponed surgery for cancer patients.

“Our priority is to save lives that are now under threat. I hope people understand,” he said.

The funeral director Hodo wears complete protective equipment to collect the bodies of COVID-19 victims at the hospital. The dead are placed in a double-waterproof body bag and placed in a casket at discharge, so the family cannot see their faces.

“They can’t even say goodbye to their loved ones,” Hodo said. “It’s a pain.”

Copyright 2021 AP communication. all rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.

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