(Kyodo) _ Health care officials in 38 of the 47 prefectures in Japan say they face a shortage of obstetricians, while those officials in 32 prefectures say they do not have enough pediatricians, according to a Kyodo News survey released Monday.
The survey, based on interviews with those officials earlier this month, also showed officials in 24 prefectures said doctors are in short supply in remote inland areas and small islands.
While the health ministry is planning to expand enrollments in medical schools from the year starting in April 2008, officials in most prefectures said such a move alone would not solve the shortage. Only those in 12 prefectures said it could lead to a resolution of the problem.
The central government may have to take a broader range of measures to address the issue by, for instance, offering greater financial support to local governments and making arrangements for dispatching doctors when needed.
An official in Aichi Prefecture, for instance, said patients have to go to a neighboring health care administration zone for emergency care and obstetric needs on holidays or during the night in the southern part of the prefecture.
In Kagoshima Prefecture, 15 of the 28 islands with residents had no doctors living on their islands. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry decided in August to allow universities in 10 prefectures, mainly in the Tohoku and Chubu regions, to increase enrollment quotas in their medical programs.
One prefectural official said such a plan was unlikely to solve the shortage problem, partly because it is not clear whether graduates would pick obstetrics or pediatrics as their chosen field.
Public relations campaigns designed to get medical students interested in working in remote areas and a review of remuneration for pediatric and obstetric treatment could help ease the lack of doctors in these fields, another official commented.
One factor believed to have caused the doctor shortage is a program that started in fiscal 2004 for newly licensed doctors to receive training at hospitals and clinics.
Under the program, many of them have opted for private hospitals instead of those hospitals affiliated with the universities where they studied. These university hospitals had long served as a vehicle for dispatching interns to hospitals in various places.
Furthermore, fewer and fewer students are choosing obstetrics and pediatrics as their specialties because of particularly severe working conditions and a growing number of lawsuits claiming malpractice.
In its new policy unveiled in August, the ministry disclosed a plan to assist prefectures in consolidating obstetric and pediatric departments at regional hospitals and setting up scholarship programs that would require recipients to stay in their prefectures after graduation.
Some officials interviewed voiced doubts at such measures, however, saying that financial resources are tight and that recipients may end up leaving anyway after meeting repayment obligations for scholarship money.
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