“When I think about the feelings of athletes, I want the games to be held, but I also see difficulties,” said Takaaki Aoki, a 58-year-old specially appointed associate professor at the Department of Orthopedic Surgery of Gifu University School of Medicine.
“…we need to bring back persons with disabilities to the center of the inclusion agenda. We want to change the behavior of society towards persons with disabilities at a global level,” he said. “We are very ambitious. We want the games to change the world.”
The Tokyo metropolitan government and others celebrated the 100-day countdown to the Aug. 24 opening of the Tokyo Paralympic Games on Sunday.
“We’ll make preparations to realize safe and secure games so that the event will be a light of hope,” Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said at a ceremony to mark the countdown.
Shigeyuki Miwa, 61, is a doctor at a hospital in the town of Tsuwano who administers vaccinations to local elderly people. His second daughter, Junko Hirose, a 30-year-old visually impaired judo athlete, is slated to represent Japan at the Tokyo Paralympics this summer. Miwa has inoculated some 2,400 people since late April, working even on the day before the relay.
According to the Kanagawa prefectural government, in February of this year, it was confirmed that twenty-two users of the Nakai Yamayurien facility for the disabled were physically restrained for more than eight hours, including being kept in locked rooms and tied to wheelchairs.
Speaking to AFP, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) president said stringent virus countermeasures will keep athletes and the Japanese public safe.
Former International Paralympic Committee (IPC) President Sir Philip Craven called Group B “the pool of death” after the men’s wheelchair basketball draw for Tokyo 2020 was completed.
Two doctors who were arrested and charged with killing Yuri Hayashi, a woman living in Kyoto who had contracted ALS by administering drugs at her request have been re-arrested for the murder of the father of one of the doctors, who died 10 years ago, according to interviews with investigators.
The Japanese government intends to make residential care facilities a form of “living place” and promote the transition of residents to the community and the use of private rooms.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pledged Monday to speed up the vaccination of the country’s elderly population against the novel coronavirus, which began in earnest on the day.
