Lack of Reform The current system relies on public health centers -- a web of over 450 institutions embedded in local communities that do everything from contact-tracing to investigating child abuse -- to coordinate and find hospitals for patients during an infectious disease outbreak.
But the centers, which have seen their numbers shrink due to lack of public funding, become easily overwhelmed during virus surges as the nurses that staff them are also tasked with other epidemic work, like tracing and tracking close contacts of the infected.
The lack of medical reform has been blamed on Japan’s slow-moving bureaucracy and the vested interest of physicians’ lobbies.