Doctors prepping to keep Tokyo safe and healthy during 2020 Olympics

With the games being held in the hottest and most humid part of Tokyo's summer, heatstroke and heat exhaustion is a serious concern for medical officials

Whose bright idea was that? People will be dropping like flies! It’s also in the middle of the school summer vacation, so I hope their preparations include treating children.

Japanese doctors? Yeah, no thanks!

Tokyo ? Safe ? Healthy ?

I have been taken to hospitals in Japanese ambulances, and have accompanied family in American ambulances. A japanese ambulance is a cold can on four wheels. An American ambulance is a hospital on wheels, connected on line and a realy life saving venue.

What gives with the Japanese ambulances? Why are they so...archaic? Red and white paint with a siren does not make for an emergency vehicle. They are equivalent to fire engines without hoses.

By the way, I have no complaints about Japanese doctors at all. I have only raves for 99% of them.

During the Olympics, free bottles of water should be available at every corner near venues as well as translators wearing special uniforms so everyone knows who they are.

Unless they fix signs, and add escalators and elevators in the train systems especially underground, there will be stranded people lost for weeks down there.

@Tom - except for Akita prefecture, the Japan Medical Association does not approve of ambulance staff carrying out any measures other than administering oxygen or monitoring the patient, after doing all the paperwork to enter the vehicle. Interestingly, in Akita, where the staff behave as paramedics in the usual sense of the word, the survival rate for cardiac arrest, which needs prompt management and treatment, is the highest in the country.

wanderlustToday  09:57 am JST

Exactly, basically a health insurance subsidized taxi service, hence the spike in use in recent years by elderly or lonely types seeking attention.

a government survey conducted in the summer of 2016 found temperatures may so high as to be unsafe for athletes and spectators at some venues.

Quelle sur-bloody-prise eh! You didn't need a govt. survey to suss this out. The Qatar World Cup in 2022 followed a similar route on its bid. Namely win the bid first, deal with the intractable problems of the inhumane heat later. By that time it becomes everyone's problem and not just the candidates.

Much of this heat is attributed to millions of air conditioners running throughout the day.

Never understood why these things produced so much heat??

Better to take a long vacation during Olympics, or walk to work, because the public transportation system will be a mess. I was riding in a Japanese ambulance once, usually the doctors don't speak Japanese, but they have a translator on the phone.

@Wander: Did not know that. Thanks for the information.

I do not understand the criticism behind Japanese ambulances most of the ambulance I have seen in Tokyo are very modern equipped it with EKG and life-saving equipment and most of the hospitals in Tokyo English speaking staff at hospitals that can help Translate this notion that Japan is behind a time is false most of the ambulances are modern and compared to at least the Canadian and American system are on par other then an improvement needed in pain management. If someone is in Cardiac Arrest they will get the help they need and this notion that it's just a bed in the back of a white ambulance which is false for anyone living in Tokyo makes me wonder if these people have third hand information.

My hospital has 12 emergency beds. So, I have a nuke/earthquake shelter in my home with provisions and meds. I think it is wrong to critique ambulance services. They do a good job. If you see one going slowly, it is a taxi, fast is an emergency. The thing I hate most is drivers that don’t let them pass.

So, I have a nuke/earthquake shelter in my home with provisions and meds.

That is awesome! Would love to be set up like that.