Japan decided Saturday not to send a Self-Defense Forces medical team to India because authorities there have sufficient facilities to cope with victims from the Jan. 26 earthquake, Defense Agency officials said.
The last-minute decision came as a Ground Self-Defense Force medical team was preparing to depart to aid relief operations in devastated areas of western India.
The Defense Agency had earlier said the GSDF's 10th Division, based in Nagoya, would on Monday dispatch a 100-member team including seven doctors and a dozen nurses to the western state of Gujarat.
The GSDF had planned to airlift surgical equipment and tents for use as field hospitals to India today.
Equipment and tents were already being loaded onto trucks when news arrived early Saturday morning that the mission had been canceled.
"We had hoped to represent Japan in helping the Indian people, if only a little. Now that the government has made a decision, we will stop preparations and go back to our barracks with a heavy heart," a GSDF 10th Division spokesman said.
The dispatch would have been the second overseas relief operation for Japanese forces following the aid provided in the aftermath of the 1998 hurricane in Honduras that killed more than 6,000 people in Central America.
A 13-member rescue and medical team dispatched by the National Police Agency is currently in Gujarat.