The Japan Medical Association
Authors: Yoshitake Yokokura
Journal: New England Journal of Medicine (1952)

Japan attained the goal of establishing the universal health insurance system in 1961. In recent years, the Long-term Care Insurance System and Medical Insurance System for the Elderly aged 75 or over were established in 2000 and 2008, respectively to maintain national health in the aging society.

Seeing the historical changes of the population ratio of those over 65 years old in Japan, we can estimate that the ratio will be rising from 23% in 2010 to 39.9% in 2060. Thus, Japan will be aging at an unprecedentedly rapid pace.

As Japan approaches a super-aged society, what is required is to establish the stronger community health provision system focusing care of the elderly, to improve and strengthen the roles of family physicians in the comprehensive community health care system, and to build a sustainable health care system which meets the needs of the people in communities.

To achieve this goal, the JMA requested the national government to bear the financial burden, which led to the General Security Fund for Community Medicine and Long-term Care with 7.5 billion US$ for medicine and 60 billion US$ for long-term care in 2014. Using this fund, we will do our best in supporting any effort by local medical associations that aim to realize effective and quality medical and long-term care.

In Japan, we have health check-up systems which totally provide us with a health check-up covering a whole life from infant to the old-old stage of elderly. However, these systems are provided individually and there is no integrated system to manage the personal life-long health information by connecting these individual systems. The JMA proposes the government to incorporate these in to the plan of “Life-long Health Services.” To manage the personal whole-life health information in an integrated way helps to reduce the gaps between average life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. Having many more healthy elderly in a society may also keep the medical costs lower.

The JMA is also endeavoring to increase healthy longevity by incorporating the health check-up programduring the period from childhood, working years to old age in the plan of “Life-long Health Services.”

For disaster preparedness by the medical profession, the JMA was appointed as a designated public organization in August 2014 which reviews the government’s Basic Disaster Provision Plan. Dr. Yoshitake Yokokura, President of the JMA was also appointed a member of the Central Disaster Prevention Council in June 2015 which consists of the cabinet ministers with Prime Minister as chair.

In the areas of overseas medical assistance, the JMA extended medical support to Nepal which was severely damaged by the great earthquake in April 2015. As requested mainly by the Taiwan Medical Association, the JMA also dispatched six Japanese specialists to Taiwan to provide medical assistance to many patients with a severe burn injury by the accident of dust explosion which occurred in June of this year. The case of Taiwan was carried out based on the iJMAT program which the JMA has been promoting.