The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is planning to introduce a system to dispatch public health nurses from other prefectures to places in need when the area experiences a local outbreak of the novel coronavirus, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
Under the envisaged wide-ranging coordination system, when a large number of people become infected in a specific area, the ministry will ask prefectural governments to cooperate with them to dispatch public health nurses to where they are needed most. The system is aimed at strengthening the response to clusters by promptly securing public health nurses who will track down infection routes in such cases.
-- Coordinated by ministry
Public health nurses are sometimes dispatched from other prefectures to provide health care services at evacuation centers to support areas affected by earthquakes, torrential rains and other such disasters. However, it is unusual to have them dispatched in a wide-ranging coordination effort for the purpose of handling infectious diseases.
Public health nurses are in charge of various COVID-19-related tasks, such as identifying infection routes, monitoring the health of those who have been in close contact with an infected person and coordinating with medical institutions that can accept patients.
However, their workload has increased as more people have been infected nationwide. Under such circumstances, it is feared that if a large number of people become infected in one area, the medical institution will become overwhelmed and malfunction because of a lack of public health nurses.
Taking this into consideration, the ministry has stepped up and introduced the wide-ranging coordination system, based on the framework used for disaster assistance.
The ministry will first identify health centers that are experiencing staff shortages before acting as an intermediary and calling for nationwide cooperation.
The ministry will then coordinate with local governments whose health centers are well-staffed and figure out how many and how long public health nurses can be dispatched to other locations that need assistance.
As a trial, seven public health nurses from five prefectures, including Hokkaido, Fukushima and Tottori, were dispatched in late July to a health center in Saitama City after a number of infections were confirmed in the area.
"We'd like to accurately assess the infection situation in each area and proceed with securing the necessary number of public health nurses," said a health ministry official.
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