School Health Checkups Still Cause Trouble with Parents

Tokyo, March 17 (Jiji Press)--School doctors in Japan still have to take the risk of facing complaints from parents about their children’s body parts being exposed during regular health checkups although the education ministry took measures to soothe such parental anxiety over a year ago.

According to a survey conducted in June by online medical information provider m3.com, more than 80 pct of the 1,970 responding practitioners and physicians did not want to become school doctors chiefly out of concern that parents “more than necessary” tend not to allow their children’s bodies to be shown to the doctors.

On Jan. 22 last year, the ministry called on prefectural boards of education across the country to instruct schools to conduct annual checkups by, in principle, having students wear gym clothes or underwear and separately holding examinations for boys and girls under supervision by same-sex teachers.

But in June the same year the Gunma prefectural education board received complaints from more than one parent that a male doctor observed their children’s lower regions during annual checkups he performed for some 100 students at a public elementary school in the town of Minakami.

Several days later the town’s education board held a meeting with parents and apologized for “some insensitive acts.” The doctor, commissioned for years by the local government to take charge of checkups at the school, explained at the meeting that the action was “intended to see body growth.” But the board decided to ask another doctor to take care of the school from next month.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]