TOKYO -- The government will ease the heavy burden on hospitals to send back foreign tourists who fall seriously ill or pass away while in Japan by creating a dedicated council in each prefecture to handle the matter.
When foreign tourists get severely sick or die in Japan, medical institutions usually contact the local embassy or other diplomatic missions of the patient's home country and arrange air transportation, among other steps, to send them home. The process takes time, money and labor, causing frustration at many care providers. And to make matters worse, the care facilities sometimes fail to collect the costs from the patient's families or local missions.
