A hospital affiliated with the Kinki University School of Medicine discontinued care for six severely ill newborn babies in 1996 and 1997 after they were judged to be incurable, a doctor who used to work at the university said Sunday.
Oji Noma, who currently runs a clinic in Hyogo Prefecture, said in a publication in 1999 that they included an infant who was determined to be facing imminent death from a slowing heartbeat and another who was in a prolonged coma.
The six cases, reported in a journal of the Japan Society for Premature and Newborn Medicine, were among nine babies who died during that period in the newborn intensive care unit at the Kinki University School of Medicine hospital in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture.