82-year-old woman turned away by five hospitals dies

FUKUSHIMA (Kyodo) A doctor in the house?: Page 3 (Kyodo) An 82-year-old woman died in a hospital in February after being refused admission by five other hospitals in Fukushima Prefecture, a local fire department said Friday.

A number of cases have been exposed in Japan in which hospitals have refused to accept emergency patients mainly due to a lack of medical staff. In October, a pregnant woman in Tokyo was refused admission by eight hospitals and died three days after giving birth and undergoing surgery for a brain hemorrhage.

After receiving an emergency call at 11:21 p.m. on Feb. 5, the Koriyama-area fire department in Fukushima Prefecture dispatched an ambulance to pick up the woman, a resident of Koriyama, who was seized with cramps and vomited.

The fire department asked five Koriyama hospitals a total of nine times to accept the woman. But the hospitals refused to accept her, citing lack of empty beds or doctors.

The ambulance eventually transported the woman to Fukushima Medical University Hospital in the city of Fukushima, some 40 km from Koriyama. She fell unconscious and stopped breathing in the ambulance en route to the hospital.