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Courage of doctors in Fukushima nuclear zone

“Doctors are there to work in this kind of adversity,” he said. “This is my mission — maybe it’s the last chapter of my medical career.”……

Doctors defy radiation woes in Japan’s Fukushima – Channel NewsAsia, 17 May, 11, FUKUSHIMA CITY, Japan: When other doctors fled, 72-year old Kyohei Takahashi stayed, and hundreds of patients in the tsunami-hit Japanese town of Minamisoma near a crippled nuclear plant will never forget.Dr. Takahashi has defied radiation fears and worked gruelling hours for the past nine weeks to do what he considers his duty.”As a doctor, I thought, I shouldn’t retreat,” he said. “I told myself: who will do it if I don’t?”
Takahashi says he decided to keep his clinic open when other doctors closed shop and fled after the Fukushima nuclear power plant, just 25 kilometres (16 miles) south of Minamisoma, was crippled by the March 11 quake and tsunami.

“It was utter panic,” the doctor recalled. “The telephones didn’t work, the shops were closed, people had disappeared and no hospitals were open except this one. The city was completely dead.”

Takahashi, who specialises in obstetrics and gynaecology, accepted anyone who came for help, mostly elderly people who remained in the stricken city following a government order to stay indoors or evacuate.

Together with four clinic workers, he has examined as many as 120 patients a day, many of them suffering pneumonia as they withstood freezing temperatures without electricity, running water or enough food after the disaster.

“Doctors are there to work in this kind of adversity,” he said. “This is my mission — maybe it’s the last chapter of my medical career.”……

Doctors defy radiation woes in Japan’s Fukushima – Channel NewsAsia

May 17, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | - Fukushima 2011, Japan, Religion and ethics