Medical institutions are struggling to survive in the wake of a government policy to curb national medical expenses from the current 30 trillion yen a year.
To meet the challenges presented by an era of fiscal austerity, many hospitals have closed or streamlined departments, merged with other hospitals or actively sought more volunteers.
Nowhere has this trend been more evident than in the branch of medicine devoted to treating children. The pediatrics department at Tokyo's Aoyama Hospital will provide a concrete example of this when it closes its doors at the end of March.