The risk of hantavirus spreading in Japan through person-to-person transmission is low, even if infected passengers from a cruise ship linked to a recent outbreak enter the country, the health ministry said Wednesday. The ministry called on the public to remain calm, after three people died in a suspected hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean. A Japanese national is among passengers on the ship.
Japan’s health minister Kenichiro Ueno said Friday he will call for nationwide vaccination to prevent measles. According to the health chief, 299 measles cases were reported between Jan. 1 and April 12, already exceeding the total figure for 2025. Cluster infections were observed at schools and others.
In a retrial at the Fukuoka District Court on the 20th, Presiding Judge Shinichi Suzushima sentenced a 44-year-old male radiological technologist to one year and six months in prison, suspended for three years.The man had been charged with quasi-forcible indecency for touching the chest of a female student with intellectual disabilities during a 2018 medical check-up at a high school in Fukuoka Prefecture. Judge Suzushima upheld the credibility of the student’s testimony, describing the act as a “despicable crime that exploited his professional position.”
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Thursday that the government will release 50 million medical gloves from its stockpile to medical institutions starting next month. The move came after some medical institutions expressed concerns about supplies of medical products amid the Middle East crisis.
Japan’s Central Social Insurance Medical Council on Wednesday started to discuss extending the public health insurance coverage to two regenerative medicine products using induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells. The council, which advises the health minister, is expected to decide the official prices for the products as early as summer. The products will come into use for medical treatment after that.
Japan’s industry ministry has requested major oil wholesalers to sell fuel directly to medical institutions and public transportation operators affected by crude oil supply disruptions amid the worsening situation surrounding Iran. Designating hospitals and other institutions as critical facilities, the ministry asked wholesalers to supply fuel to them on a priority basis, ministry officials said Monday. The fuel subject to the request is expected to include fuel oil used in boilers for sterilizing medical equipment.
A nonprofit organization in the western Japan prefecture of Osaka has launched a crowdfunding campaign to continue its “doctor jet” service, which transports critically ill patients to medical facilities by air. Japan Critical Care Jet Network (JCCN), based in the city of Suita in Osaka, began the campaign on Monday to maintain the service for severely ill pediatric patients, with a goal of raising 200 million yen. The project has relied on donations, but funds have become depleted, making it difficult to continue operations without additional support. The doctor jet is an aircraft staffed with doctors and nurses that provides intensive care, including artificial respiration, while transporting patients to medical institutions, including those equipped with pediatric intensive care units.
A male leukemia patient between 10 and 19 died and two other young male patients are unconscious after spinal injections of anticancer drugs at a hospital in the city of Saitama, near Tokyo, hospital officials have said. The Saitama Prefectural Children’s Medical Center is consulting police in view of the possibility that the incident resulted from a criminal or accidental cause, the officials said Wednesday. Of the three patients, one died in February, while a boy under 10 and the other patient, who is between 10 and 19, are in critical condition.
A male leukemia patient between 10 and 19 died and two other young male patients are unconscious after spinal injections of anticancer drugs at a hospital in the city of Saitama, near Tokyo, hospital officials have said. The Saitama Prefectural Children’s Medical Center is consulting police in view of the possibility that the incident resulted from a criminal or accidental cause, the officials said Wednesday. Of the three patients, one died in February, while a boy under 10 and the other patient, who is between 10 and 19, are in critical condition.
Many evacuees from Fukushima Prefecture cite anxiety about a lack of medical services as a reason for their hesitation to return to their hometowns devastated by a severe nuclear accident following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. More than half of the population who lived in Futaba just before the triple disaster are still living outside their hometowns, although evacuation orders have been lifted in many places in the county. In Fukushima, the number of medical institutions has plunged since the disaster. Many of the 132 medical facilities that had operated in the prefecture have suspended operations, leaving only 47 currently in service.
Barrier Free Japan