Photo/Illutration Toyoaki Sawano, a doctor at Jyoban Hospital and a member of the research team (Keitaro Fukuchi)

FUKUSHIMA--Researchers found that the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear accident took a deadly toll on people who required nursing care at the time of the disaster. 

Long-term care was necessary for half of the 520 people from Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, whose post-disaster deaths were certified as related to the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami and the nuclear accident, according to a recent study. 

Researchers at Fukushima Medical University and other institutions said it becomes important to prevent people who require high levels of nursing care from contracting aspiration pneumonia and other respiratory diseases at an early stage following a disaster.

Disaster-related deaths are those caused by the worsening of physical conditions during evacuation or other circumstances after a disaster.

The research team examined data on 520 people from Minami-Soma whose deaths were certified as disaster-related by February 2021, about 10 years after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the northeastern Tohoku region on March 11, 2011.

One person was excluded from the analysis because the number of days between the disaster and death was unknown.

The research team found that 266, or 51 percent, of the 519 people had been certified as requiring nursing care at the time of the disaster under the government’s Long-Term Care Insurance System.

The team includes Moe Kawashima, a sixth-year student at the Department of Radiation Health Management at Fukushima Medical University. 

The number of days from the disaster to death averaged about 160 days for the 117 people certified as requiring the highest level of nursing care, called “requiring long-term care 5.”

Of the 85 people who were certified as requiring long-term care 5 and died before that threshold, about 40 percent died from aspiration pneumonia and other respiratory diseases.

Toyoaki Sawano, a doctor at Jyoban Hospital in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, and a member of the research team, said the study showed that people requiring higher levels of nursing care are likely to die earlier from disaster-related causes.

“We must think about how to minimize the impact of a disaster in its acute phase,” he said.

On the other hand, the number of days from the disaster to death averaged at about 300 days for those not certified as requiring nursing care.

The most common cause of death was cancer.

Researchers said they likely died because opportunities for hospital visits and treatment were reduced after the disaster.

They said it is necessary to strengthen cooperation between hospitals in disaster areas and those in regions where patients evacuated.

A total of 2,337 deaths in Fukushima Prefecture were certified as disaster-related as of Aug. 1.

Minami-Soma, which faces the Pacific Ocean, was hard-hit by the earthquake and the tsunami, and has the largest number of disaster-related deaths by municipality.

Residents in large parts of the city were ordered to evacuate after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

The team’s findings were published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. The paper can be read at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2023.103989.

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