Tohoku residents campaign for cross-border air ambulances
Northern Japanese locals argue that local emergency services should be allowed to directly request HEMS services from neighboring prefectures
Municipalities in three prefectures of Japan’s Tohoku region are campaigning to allow air ambulances to operate across prefectural borders.
Under current regulations, air ambulance helicopters in the three neighbouring prefectures – Akita, Iwate and Aomori – are restricted from responding to incidents from outside their prefecture.
While this is intended to ensure that they focus on meeting the needs of their respective territories, this can limit the flexibility of emergency response services, leading to situations where helicopters which are available and geographically closer to an incident cannot respond.
There are currently four ‘doctor helicopters’ operating in the three prefectures – one each in Akita and Iwate, and two in Aomori.
Operations should prioritize ‘living areas’ rather than borders
In response, an alliance of 24 municipalities situated on the borders between the three prefectures – called the Kitaou Development Promotion Council – is proposing that local fire departments should be able to directly request the dispatch of other helicopters from other prefectures at their discretion.
The Council has submitted requests to the governments of the three prefectures to enable this change to happen. The organization’s Chairman, Mayor of Hachinohe City Yuichi Kumagai, stated: “By implementing wide-area cooperative operations that prioritize ‘living areas’ that are not bound by prefectural borders, we will demonstrate an advanced emergency medical care model to the whole country.”
In response to the request, Akita Prefecture’s Vice Governor Kanbe responded that the government was ‘considering in detail what kind of impact flexible operation will have’, but would ‘give top priority to the lives of residents’.
Japan celebrated the launch of a ‘Doctor-Heli service in its southern Kagawa Prefecture on 18 April 2022 – the final prefecture in the country to launch such a service.