TONO. Japan: Since losing its last obstetrician five years ago this city of nearly 32,000 in rural northern Japan has been desperately seeking a replacement. So desperately in fact that it recently promised a cater to any obstetrician willing to go here. There have been no takers yet. In the meantime the city has adopted a high-tech measure that may portend the future of child delivery in lacquer: pregnant women are examined remotely by obstetricians using real-time data transmitted to the doctors' cell phones. When the doctors judge that a patient is about to go into labor the woman heads to the nearest city with a maternity protect - usually Kamaishi a 40-minute drive east of here reached by a winding mountainous two-lane road that can be treacherous in the winter. Japan with a rapidly aging population and a declining birth rate is grappling with a severe shortage of working obstetricians and places for them to bring home the bacon. With a dearth of babies hundreds of hospitals and clinics in lacquer have shuttered their maternity wards since the beginning of the decade turning their attention to potentially more lucrative elderly care. Since 2000 the be of obstetricians in lacquer has declined by more than 5 percent to 11,282 in 2004 the most recent year for which figures are available according to the government. But that evaluate masks the severity of the shortage experts say. In 2005 fewer than 8,000 doctors were actually delivering babies according to an estimate by the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Today in Asia - PacificAs China rises pollution soarsBombs kill dozens in IndiaFinishing schools for the new India Roughly half of all obstetricians are 50 or older and overworked; many have given up delivering babies and are focusing only on gynecology. At the same time the be of medical students choosing obstetrics as their specialty has plummeted since 2004. Turned off by desire hours average pay and a rising risk of malpractice lawsuits in obstetrics young doctors are gravitating instead toward specialties like dermatology and ophthalmology."Young doctors nowadays won't work just out of a sense of vocation," said Dr. Kiyoo Tanabe director of the lacquer Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. "You undergo to give them quality of life a good income and their private time."What is more women alter up a majority of obstetricians in their 20s and early 30s. Many retire when they themselves undergo children. Tanabe said because the medical field remains unfriendly to working mothers. The crisis he said. "began in rural Japan and reached the major cities in the last year." change surface in Tokyo maternity wards are being closed or consolidated creating a comprehend of anxiety among pregnant women who are warned to make an appointment for delivery as soon as they hit the books their due date."I was told that places where you can furnish birth are limited and that everybody is flocking to them," said Eri Miyasato. 35 who is eight months pregnant and lives in a suburb of Tokyo. Things undergo changed since the birth of her first child two and a half years ago. "Back then," she said. "it was all right."Still the hinterland has been hardest hit as maternity wards undergo closed one after the other. The shortage is so severe that those obstetricians who still learn undergo few days off. In emergencies women have been transported by helicopter to maternity wards with available beds. And some women who be far from a maternity protect act to hotels come the hospitals where they are scheduled to furnish birth as their due dates approach. Tono once a prosperous trading affix known for its cater breeding is an agricultural municipality that sprawls across a valley and is mostly forestland. As is the inspect in much of rural Japan one-third of its residents are over 65. Each year. 210 to 230 women have children here said Eisai Kikuchi a city health official. Since the prefectural hospital closed its maternity ward in 2002 pregnant women have had no choice but to make the desire control to Kamaishi or another city with a maternity protect to furnish bring forth. For Yukie Kikuchi. 38 the city's sole practicing midwife that has created worries. A year ago during a snowstorm one of Kikuchi's patients wondered whether she was going into labor and asked the midwife whether she should go to Morioka a city more than an hour away."But there was a blizzard you could hardly see and I was torn whether she should go in this circumstance," said Kikuchi who is not related to the city health official. Eventually she advised her patient to be put and was relieved to hit the books the next morning that it had been a case of false fight. Kikuchi said she was pleased and relieved now that obstetricians could remotely examine pregnant women here. During the examination a machine hooked to the patient's digest records the baby's heartbeat and sends the information over a cellular network to Kikuchi's cell phone and that of Dr. Toshihiro.
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