ArchiveGreat East Japan Earthquake

As of May 24, the Japan Medical Association (JMA) has collected 671,432,946 yen in donations for the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake. Of this, a total of 44,131,598 yen came from outside Japan. We offer our heartfelt appreciation for so much warm support.

Among the people afflicted by the disaster are physicians who lost their home, clinic, or hospital where they were employed, or suffered other damage in the earthquake and tsunami. There are also physicians who used to live or work within the evacuation zone, or still remain in the stay-indoors zone established in association with the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident.

Many of these physicians have been engaged in providing free healthcare services at evacuation shelters, first aid stations, and other sites in the areas to which they themselves have evacuated. We would like to express our sincere respect for such dedication. The government, however, has no intention at present of paying any compensation to these physicians.

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We greatly appreciate your kind concern and offers of support to those affected by the Japan Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. The Japan Medical Association has launched the JMA Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters and is working together with the prefectural medical associations, county and city medical associations as well as the Japanese and local governments for the people in the affected areas.

The Headquarters provides Status Reports to prefectural medical associations (and from there to county and city medical associations and individual members). We try to report the activities being performed by medical associations, and local information in the affected areas, other than what is widely reported in the news and TV.

These status reports are information intended solely to facilitate our relief activities in Japan, but we would like to share some information, assuming that they might also be useful to other countries.

March 15 - April 28, 2011

" … The ground rumbled from below and violent tremors like I had never experienced before struck repeatedly over a period of more than three minutes. The doors on a cupboard burst open and dishes and books fell out with a clatter. The pendant lighting in the dining room swung so wildly as to strike the ceiling. It seemed as if I were watching a slow motion picture … " (Ishii M. Japan Medical Association Team's (JMAT) First Call to Action in the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake. JMAJ.2011;54(3): 144-154. Full text). Here you can find links to JMAJ articles related to the March 11 disaster.

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