The Daily Yomiuri(Tokyo)
Copyright 2006 The Yomiuri Shimbun
All Rights Reserved
The Tokyo metropolitan government will begin developing a system next fiscal year to accumulate and analyze data on patients taken to hospital by ambulance in an effort to take swift measures against bioterrorism or a highly infectious new strain of influenza.
In cooperation with the Tokyo Fire Department, the metropolitan government will provide health care centers and designated hospitals with warning information on how to prevent infections from spreading when abnormal outbreak patterns are detected among patients. According to the metropolitan government, such a crisis control system would be the first of its kind in the nation.
At present, designated hospitals report the outbreak of infectious diseases to their respective local governments through a healthcare center as required by law. But if such patients are not treated at designated medical institutions, infectious diseases may go unnoticed or unreported. In addition, it takes time to receive reports and count the number of sick patients, making it difficult for local governments to respond quickly to an outbreak and take proper countermeasures.
Meanwhile, since the Tokyo Fire Department dispatches ambulances for about 700,000 incidents a year, it is knowledgeable about the conditions of patients from the hospitals where those patients are delivered. The metropolitan government will utilize this information for the envisioned crisis control.
The metropolitan government will develop an emergency transportation surveillance system that allows those involved to share emergency information. For the time being, the Social Welfare and Public Health Bureau will analyze the information. A health crisis control center with better data-analysis functions will be set up by fiscal 2012 within the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health in Shinjuku Ward.
With the new system, the metropolitan government said it would be able to recognize new strains of influenza, which are difficult to distinguish from the common cold, in the early stages of infection, as well as disease agents that are the result of bioterrorism.
Officials said the system will also be extremely useful in helping to identify sources of food poisoning epidemics.
The metropolitan government plans to earmark nearly 100 million yen in the next fiscal year budget for related items, including a test operation of the system, and aims to have the system fully operational in fiscal 2009.