The nation's hospitals are short of beds equipped to treat premature babies as well as doctors specialized in treating them, according to a survey conducted by the Health and Welfare Ministry, ministry officials said Saturday.
The ministry's research panel on perinatal period treatments, headed by Hajime Nakamura, a professor at Kobe University, carried out the survey.
After assessing the results, the panel believes Japan's low death rate for newborns, which is the world's lowest, is chiefly thanks to hard work by medical staff, the officials said.
The survey was conducted in October 1998 and covered some 1,000 medical institutions treating premature babies and other high-risk newborns, including those whose mothers had medical complications during delivery. Some 60 percent of the institutions responded to the survey.
The results show that high-risk babies accounted for an average 7 percent of total births. Based on this, the researchers calculated that the minimum number of beds to treat such babies was 77 per 10,000 newborns.
However, the responding hospitals had only an average of 54 beds per 10,000 newborns.
The survey also shows that only 23 percent of the responding hospitals had doctors specialized in the treatment of newborns. The doctors who were treating newborns at other hospitals were pediatricians.
The average number of doctors in charge of newborns was 12 per 10,000 newborns. The research panel believes this is a minimal number considering the average number of high-risk babies, the officials said.