Dangerous Infectious Diseases: Cooperation over Wide Area Needed among Designated Hospitals

Editorial

14:59 JST, February 22, 2026

Now that international travel has become brisk, dangerous infectious diseases could enter Japan anytime. Many people surely must have fully realized this from the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is especially important to establish treatment and infection prevention systems to deal with diseases that have high mortality rates such as Ebola hemorrhagic fever. It is also essential to make preparations to avoid turmoil when patients of such infectious diseases are confirmed.

The Infectious Diseases Law classifies Ebola hemorrhagic fever and other high-risk infectious diseases as “Category I.” When a patient contracts a Category I disease, they must be accepted by a medical institution that has been designated in advance by the central or prefectural governments.

There are currently 58 such hospitals nationwide, selected from university and public hospitals that play as core medical institutions in their regions.

However, a Yomiuri Shimbun survey of these 58 facilities found that over 70% of respondents said that they are inadequately equipped or staffed. Moreover, about 40% said they could not provide adequate treatment. The main reasons cited included aging facilities and a lack of specialized doctors.

This raises concern about the reliability of these hospitals as key regional facilities to deal with infectious diseases. It is worrisome regarding whether they can respond effectively in an emergency if the current situation is left unaddressed.

Among the hospitals that responded, Okayama University Hospital, for example, said that it has dedicated rooms, but they are too small to accommodate the medical equipment needed for treating severely ill patients.

Another problem is that when bringing patients to their rooms, the same elevators used by other inpatients must be used.

The central government has established a subsidy program for facility improvements when designated medical institutions become capable of accepting Category I patients. However, since the program requires prefectures to bear half the cost of the subsidy, some prefectural governments seem hesitant, and the use of the program is not progressing as intended.

Many designated institutions also struggle to secure doctors who specialize in infectious diseases.

Meanwhile, designated hospitals have raised questions about the requirement to keep dedicated beds constantly available. A method for quickly repurposing beds used for normal admission to accept Category I patients in an emergency is worth considering.

The central and local governments must not leave related issues to designated institutions, and they need to investigate the actual situations at such hospitals to sort out issues that need to be addressed.

Currently, at least one hospital per prefecture is designated to handle Category I infectious diseases. However, there may be occasions in which it would be difficult for a single facility to handle dangerous infectious diseases alone.

How about establishing a system that transcends local government boundaries, designating hub facilities for each regional block, and fostering cooperation over a wide area? It would be desirable to establish mechanisms for exchanging information among designated facilities during normal times and for dispatching personnel to each other during emergencies.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Feb. 22, 2026)