Japan to help people on welfare take medical treatment early

December 18, 2017

Tokyo- Japan's health ministry plans to launch a system to encourage welfare recipients suspected of suffering or expected to suffer lifestyle diseases such as diabetes to start receiving treatment early, according to informed sources.

An advance project to assess the system's effectiveness will be conducted in fiscal 2018 starting next April, the sources added.

According to the sources, the ministry intends to have health nurses, or other people with medical and welfare knowledge and capacities to work with doctors, stationed at municipal welfare offices and encourage the lifestyle disease sufferers or potential sufferers to visit clinics and hospitals with them.

Those "attendant instructors" will also consider measures to prevent the welfare recipients' symptoms from getting worse together with doctors and the recipients themselves.

The ministry aims to curb the government's medical expenses for people on welfare, who are more prone to metabolic syndrome that may lead to lifestyle diseases than those who do not receive welfare benefits.

As sufferers of those diseases can hardly notice symptoms, many of them fail to go to see a doctor, or stop receiving medical treatment.

If a diabetic ends up receiving a dialysis treatment, the patient's medical expenses are estimated to total some 5 million yen a year.

Currently, caseworkers visit welfare recipients to learn their health conditions. But answers are sometimes inaccurate, making it difficult to prevent them from becoming seriously ill, the sources said. Jiji Press