At any other time, it would have been a very ordinary visit by a worried mother to her doctor. But for Chihiro Yoshida, 27, and her two young children, normality is in short supply.
At any other time, it would have been a very ordinary visit by a worried mother to her doctor. But for Chihiro Yoshida, 27, and her two young children, normality is in short supply.
The Yoshidas left their home on March 16 to get as far away from the quake-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant as possible.
They now live, along with 370 other evacuees, at the National Nasu-Kashi Youth Nature Center in Nishigo, a mountain village in Fukushima Prefecture.
On Monday, pediatricians Masahiro Watanabe and Yusaku Abe from Fukushima Medical University Hospital, 80 kilometers away in Fukushima city, made their second visit since the disaster to the 65 children under 13 years old at the remote center.
Yoshida was worried because her daughter Mana, 3, had a hard stool, which had left traces of blood on her diaper. She also seemed to want her mother's milk more often than before the family had evacuated from the coastal city of Iwaki, near the stricken plant.
Watanabe advised Yoshida, who is also nursing a 6-month-old baby, to give her older daughter more fluids, such as oranges or tea.
"If she wants to drink milk, it is all right. Hold her tight when you breast-feed her," he said.
Doctors in the university's pediatrics department are now making rounds of evacuation centers across a wide area in the disaster zone.
Mitsuaki Hosoya, the department's head, said the hospital had treated many people for serious injuries following the quake. A good number of them were adults.
Hosoya said the doctors asked themselves what had become of the children, and decided to go to the shelters to find out.
They used an Internet mailing list to exchange information with graduates of the university and other hospitals. About 200 doctors sent 1,600 messages in 10 days to try to build up a picture of the evacuation forced by the disaster.
Now, they are trying to restore basic medical support to the displaced children.
At the center in Nishigo, Abe saw Toshiya Sato, 9, whose family had moved through a series of centers since being evacuated from their home, which is within 20-kilometers of the nuclear plant, on March 12.
Toshiya needs regular medication for a chronic illness, but his family had not been able to find it at the shelters and had been forced to reduce the daily dose. Abe was able to provide the drug.
Toshiya's mother, Harumi, said: "I really appreciate it. We don't even have the insurance card with us. We will stay here for a while."
Every morning about 30 pediatricians at the university hospital discuss their assignments for the day. Some take care of inpatients, while others go out to the shelters. They gather figures on the number and ages of children in each refuge and what supplies are required.
Pediatrician Tomoko Oikawa is in charge of procurement. In the aftermath, she hammered out deals to buy diapers, baby wipes and other supplies, whose packaging was damaged in the quake, at discount prices from major retailers.
Hosoya and others also had to negotiate to get gasoline and to get their cars recognized as emergency vehicles.
He says the needs of children are changing as they stay longer in the shelters. The focus now is on prevention of infectious diseases and on improving hygiene.
Psychological support is also vitally important, as the strain of the continuing disaster begins to tell on the children. More young children are reported to be crying at night in the centers.
Meanwhile, pediatricians and other doctors in western Japan who provided care in the wake of the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 are preparing to join medical personnel in Fukushima and other stricken areas.
Naohisa Kawamura, chief of pediatrics at Osaka Rosai Hospital in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, says his experience of the Hanshin quake taught him that support in the first month is vital.
"It will be a formidable task for doctors trying to cover these wide areas," Kawamura said. "It would be better if families with children are gathered in cities so they can have access to medical care, including mental care, around the clock."
Hakuyo Ebara, who operates the Ebara Children's Clinic in Hyogo Prefecture, said it was important for the quake-hit prefectures to say what sort of medical help they needed.
He said the central government should also release precise information on radiation from the Fukushima accident to medical personnel planning to join the relief effort.
(This article was compiled from reports by Tomoko Saito and Tadashi Sugiyama.)