“In the past five decades, Japan has achieved a large number of health successes. These include the full implementation of universal insurance coverage, cultivating the world’s highest healthy life expectancy, and the control and even eradication of common infectious diseases. In addition, alcohol consumption and transport accident deaths have decreased substantially over the past 50 years. Despite these achievements, the country faces many structural challenges, including negative population growth, an ageing population, low fertility, a shrinking economy, increasing unemployment, and an increasing NCD-related disease burden. In addition, although the overall life expectancy and healthy life expectancy have been increasing in Japan, there are increasing disparities among prefectures, demonstrating a need for region-specific health policies.”
Source: Sakamoto H, Rahman M, Nomura S, Okamoto E, Koike S, Yasunaga H et al. Japan Health System Review. Vol. 8 No. 1. New Delhi: World Health Organization, Regional Office for South-East Asia, 2018.
“Japan has successfully reduced the disease burden from NCDs during the past decades; however, the pace of reduction has stagnated since around 2005. Although many NCDs are preventable and are linked to lifestyle and dietary patterns, challenges still remain, especially for tobacco control. Additionally, there are no effective preventive or curative measures for Alzheimer’s disease so far, and the number of cases is only expected to increase; further efforts (i.e., effective policies to support patients in the community and R&D directed at new medicines for Alzheimer’s disease) are required. There is an urgent need to scale up effective coverage of preventive and public health interventions so as to further reduce the disease burden from NCDs.”
Source: Sakamoto H, Rahman M, Nomura S, Okamoto E, Koike S, Yasunaga H et al. Japan Health System Review. Vol. 8 No. 1. New Delhi: World Health Organization, Regional Office for South-East Asia, 2018.
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Page last updated March 25, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.