Elderly Japanese left to die in hospital
Dozens of elderly people were confirmed dead in hospitals and residential homes as heating, fuel and medicine ran out, highlighting the devastating impact of the Japanese earthquake on the country’s ageing population.
The Age has run a report from United Kingdom paper, The Guardian, saying that in one incident, Japan’s Self Defence Force discovered 128 elderly people abandoned by medical staff at a hospital nine kilometres from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant.
Most of them were comatose and 14 died shortly afterwards. Eleven were reported dead at a retirement home in Kesennuma due to freezing temperatures six days after 47 of their fellow residents were killed in the tsunami.
Almost a quarter of Japan’s population are 65 or over, and hypothermia, dehydration and respiratory diseases are taking hold among the elderly in shelters, many of whom lost their medication when the wave struck, according to Eric Ouannes, general director of Doctors Without Borders’ Japan affiliate.
This comes after Japan’s elderly people bore the brunt of the initial impact of the quake and tsunami, with many of them unable to flee to higher ground.
Although the people from the hospital near Fukushima were moved to a gymnasium in Iwaki, there are reports that conditions are not much better there. An official said the government felt “helpless and very sorry for them”.
“The condition at the gymnasium was horrible,” said Cheui Inamura.
“No running water, no medicine and very, very little food. We simply did not have means to provide good care.”
Pat Fuller, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which met yesterday in the quake zone to plan longer-term relief, said the lack of heating oil was critical.
“They don’t have enough kerosene to run heaters for all the evacuation centres,” he said.
“Only a small percentage of the petrol stations are functioning, which affects efforts to get food back into the shops. There had been an outbreak of gastric flu at one health centre we visited and if that hits old people there could be serious complications.”
