The health ministry decided Friday to extend public health insurance to cover mastectomies and oophorectomies for people with breast or ovarian cancer who are at risk of developing further tumors due to a hereditary mutation.
The number of people choosing to undergo the preventive surgeries is increasing as they have been found to reduce the risk of developing fatal cancers, prompting medical societies and patients to request coverage as the procedures often cost hundreds of thousands of yen.
Those eligible for insurance coverage are people with cancer who have been diagnosed with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome, an inherited genetic disorder in which the risk of developing cancer in those organs is higher than for other people.