Health minister blames 'lack of doctors' for pregnant woman's death

Friday 24th October, 02:14 PM JST

KUSHIRO —

Health minister Yoichi Masuzoe blamed ‘‘the lack of doctors’’ Friday for the recent incident in which a pregnant woman who needed emergency care died after being rejected by several hospitals, indicating the ministry’s intention to study and improve the situation in hospitals across Japan.

‘‘The biggest problem (behind the incident) is the lack of doctors,’’ he told reporters after visiting the Metropolitan Bokutoh Hospital that first refused to admit the 36-year-old woman, citing lack of on-duty doctors, but eventually did so.

The woman died in early October at the metropolitan hospital, a designated facility with emergency care for expectant mothers, three days after giving birth and undergoing surgery there for a brain hemorrhage.

To address the dearth of doctors, Masuzoe said, ‘‘We need to mobilize doctors in private practice and other local human resources.’‘

Masuzoe visited the hospital in Sumida Ward on Friday morning and asked Takeshi Kobayashi, the hospital’s director, and other senior doctors for a detailed explanation of the situation on the day the incident happened.

Against the backdrop of a serious shortage of obstetricians, a spate of similar incidents has happened mainly in rural areas in Japan over the recent years. But it is rare for a health minister to visit a hospital where a woman died.

The ministry plans to examine the situation at the other hospitals that refused to admit the woman to find out how many doctors were on duty at the time. The ministry also plans to find out if and how they communicated with a doctor at a maternity clinic, where the woman had been seen. The doctor requested that she be transferred to a better-equipped institution.

In the latest case, the apparent miscommunication between the maternity clinic and the Metropolitan Bokutoh Hospital over the woman’s condition is believed to have made the situation worse.

The metropolitan hospital insisted that it was not informed that the woman appeared to be suffering from a brain hemorrhage, while the doctor of the maternity clinic claimed that he explained to the hospital that she was suffering from an ‘‘unusually acute headache.’‘

The ministry will hear about the situation at a total of 74 medical institutions across Japan designated to provide emergency care for expectant women in their perinatal period. The Metropolitan Bokutoh Hospital is one of those facilities.

Based on the survey of the hospitals, the ministry is set to hammer out the necessary measures.

Earlier in the day, Masuzoe was displeased at a press conference over the Tokyo metropolitan government’s failure to notify the incident to the ministry as quickly as possible, saying that he found out about the woman’s death from media reports instead.

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Latest 15 of 27 Total Comments Show All

elbudamexicano at 08:37 PM JST - 24th October

This is a very sad situation, again showing the lack of respect for women in Japan. If this were a man (well not having the baby) having a terrible problem I do not think they would accept 7 hospitals turning the man away. Shame! Shame! Shame on Japanese society!
bamboohat at 09:10 PM JST - 24th October

This is a deep seated problem with a lot of complicated issues. A few of my thoughts:

If doctors made lots of money, and had the option of setting up family practice, clinic, work in a hospital, there would be much more options for people. Hospitals wouldn't be clogged with people waiting.

If they immediately put the more serious cases in the front of the line, and made people with common colds wait several hours, those fools would stop abusing the system.

If they didn't make you stay in the hospital for several nights for something that should be an outpatient issue, they would have more beds for serious patients.

They should make hospitals legally responsible for turning away patients that are in dire need. If old folks need to wait a few days for their chinese medicine, so be it.

The solution to these is not some complicated issue with more doctors or reading detailed transcripts for eighteen years in some oversight committee. It is showing some political will and reorganzing the system, making it more efficient, paying the doctors very well that do good jobs, and and not paying those well that do bad jobs.
timorborder at 09:13 PM JST - 24th October

This has nothing to do with socialized medicine, so everybody should just get off their collective hobby horses. The issue here is that a hospital dedicated to treating pregnancy-related issues (the first hospital contacted), blew this woman off with tragic results and has subsequently tried to push the blame for this tragedy back on the clinic that she first went to. This in itself is a disgrace, and those people involved with it should seriously reflect on their position as doctors and what that morally entails. Being a doctor (or even a medic) means that you put the needs of those who require treatment before everything else. This did not happen here.

As I said in an earlier post, based on what has been written in the media, the initial treatment that this woman required was not that difficult. In the short-term, all she required was a C-section and somebody with the guts to drill a hole in her head to release built-up cranial pressure. This ain't rocket science folks. Once these two procedures had been done, it is highly likely that her condition would have stabilized, at least giving the hospital time enough to sort themselves out and organize a surgical team to go in a stop the bleeding.

In terms of the minister saying something, that is all it is. When I see some real changes in emergency medicine in Japan, then I will pat the minister on the head. Until such change occurs, however, he is just the talking head of the system that got this woman killed.
kmwee at 09:44 PM JST - 24th October

All along I thought such incident only happens in a thirdworld country.
temporaryVisa at 10:53 PM JST - 24th October

So basically this guy is saying he's going to do nothing to make sure this won't happen again tomorrow. Sounds to me like women gamble with their lives if they want to have children in Japan.
Blue_Tiger at 01:04 AM JST - 25th October

My wife and I are trying to have children, but after this recent terrible travesty at a specially designated hospital (browny1, you are exactly right!!!!), it makes me want to take my wife somewhere else to live and raise a family, especially knowing that we are both foreign, and my wife is Korean (if hospitals treat Japanese this way, it makes me really wonder how they will treat a Korean with an American husband???). Since my time in this particular area is fast coming to a close, leaving Japan may be a serious possibility....

LORD help this country....
cracaphat at 01:05 AM JST - 25th October

The time has come to do what was written about in the Yomiuri last week.And that is copy the European model by fixing the number of doctors that can serve in the specific field of their choice. Since a lot of doctors are ducking the fields of surgery and maternity for fear of being called out,let the residents who get the best scores choose their field and ascertain a reasonable set number for the twenty or so fields of doctoring. You can't please everyone especially the perspective doctors, but there's hardly another credible solution to the problem.
ca1ic0cat at 02:22 AM JST - 25th October

OK, not enough doctors. Fine. Now what are we going to do about that? If there aren't enough doctors it doesn't matter if you set quotas for areas of speciality. What do you do to encourage more of the bright students to go into medicine in the first place? What are the barriers that students see that make them choose different careers?

Might help if those questions are answered before solutions are mandated.
Freespeech at 05:04 AM JST - 25th October

When I was running a Rep Office in Tokyo my J-employees were always going to hospital for such tremendous things as a sore throat, a runny nose etc...

They were generally arriving in office half a day late ("sumimasen, there was such a long waiting line") and they did not even know what the diagnosis was (the sensei had been p$$$$$g on them and they did not dare ask a question). Sure, they had their little pills or else, and the noses kept running anyway.

What a waste of time, money and above all precious know-how and human resources !

Yes, shame on Japanese society !
gotubadboy at 05:41 AM JST - 25th October

This is so funny, in my openion she would have died even with the full care of a so called DOCtor, these doctors are just WORTHLESS.
soothsayer at 06:58 AM JST - 25th October

This is a perfect example of how a system which provides everything for free (well, nearly) is far inferior to those that don't. Requiring even the poorest to either have medical insurance or pay for treatment in full encourages a healthy state of mind and an independant spirit. It's time for Japan to scrap subsidization and put that money to better use.
medievaltimes at 08:42 AM JST - 25th October

Typical Japan blame game -- but no one takes responsibility to find a solution.

100% correct.
linro at 08:48 AM JST - 25th October

Pregnant women dying in Japan is becoming a common thing, because the entire healthcare system in Japan is running on metal rims, politicians need to get back to work, ok give them one month to throw abuses at each other not the entire year. People are dying because of irresponsible politicians who can not take any responsibility because they are always resigning. Get a part time job like the retired population has to do before they can get a pension. As I always say keep the poli's and get rid of the tic's
taikan at 09:31 AM JST - 25th October

Hemorrhagic stroke during late stages of pregnancy almost always is a result of preeclampsia. If the reporting doctor didn't inform the hospital that the woman also was suffering from significant hypertension or preeclampsia, instead of just saying that she had an "unusually acute headache," that would help to explain the hospital's failure to recognize the seriousness of the woman's condition.
rurika at 12:08 AM JST - 26th October

what exactly does 'lack of doctors' mean? Not enough doctors specialized in obstetrics? Then start a quota system to distribute medical students more evenly. Not enough doctors in the country? Train more medical students and dare I say it, recruit overseas doctors!