Child Abuse Prevention Team Activities in a General Hospital in Tochigi, Japan.

Abstract

Child abuse is a major public health and social welfare problem in Western high-income countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Also in Japan, recently, the number of child abuse cases reported to child guidance centers (CGCs), which are equivalent to child protection agencies in other countries, has been increasing significantly. There are 209 CGCs located throughout the country, which have expressed concern about the expanding and serious social problem of child abuse, with the number of reported cases of child abuse exceeding 100 000 in the year 2016. Physical abuse is often associated with external injuries, manifesting with various symptoms such as severe headache or stomachache, and such subjects often visit hospitals. In recent years, child abuse prevention teams (CAPTs) have been established at most university hospitals or large children’s hospitals for the investigation of suspected cases of abuse or neglect. On the other hand, the number of general hospitals that have established CAPTs still remain low. A CAPT was established at our hospital in December 2011, after the Revised Organ Transplant Law was enforced in July 2010. Although the law allowed organ donation after brain death by persons younger than 15 years of age, it prohibited inclusion of abused children as donors. Since our hospital is a designated emergency and critical care center and an organ donation hospital as well, our CAPT has the task of excluding abused children as organ donors. We report on the activities of our CAPT during the past 5 years and discuss the significance of a CAPT in a general hospital in our country... Language: en