Yomiuri Shimbun Wins Prize for Reports on Abandoned Organ Transplants; MEJA Praises Reporters for Impact

The Yomiuri Shimbun

13:59 JST, November 8, 2024

A series of articles by a Yomiuri Shimbun team on the problems faced by hospitals that led to organ transplant operations being abandoned has won the annual Grand Prize of the Medical Journalists Association of Japan (MEJA).

The specified nonprofit organization announced the winner of the grand prize – which celebrates outstanding reporting in the medical field – for fiscal 2024 on Thursday.

The Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Jan. 1 that three university hospitals had declined more than 60 organs donated for transplantation in 2023 due to staff shortages and inadequacies in the hospitals’ systems, among other reasons.

The three hospitals, including the University of Tokyo Hospital, all have abundant experience performing transplants using organs donated by brain-dead patients.

After the initial report, the Yomiuri Shimbun team conducted a series of interviews both in Japan and abroad with government officials, academics and front-line medical workers, as well as patients awaiting transplants and their families. Their reports conveyed the reality of the urgent situation in the transplant system.

The government is reviewing the transplant system, having launched an investigation regarding the issue.

“The reports had a great impact on society,” the MEJA said. “The medical and science departments worked together with foreign correspondents to delve into this issue from multiple angles. The integrated approach and the methods of corroboration used can only be performed by a newspaper.”